A federal appeals court has rejected claims from black parents that a student-assignment plan for the Metropolitan Nashville district in Tennessee led to unconstitutional resegregation.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, in Cincinnati, ruled unanimously this month that although the 2008 student-assignment plan modestly increased racial isolation in some schools, it did not classify students by race and was aimed primarily at improving the usage of school buildings in the 81,000-student district.
The case concerns the student-assignment plan is devised to replace one that had been in effect for some 10 years after the district that once practiced de jure segregation of black and white students was declared unitary, or legally desegregated.