Federal Court Rules that Arizona School Officials Acted With a Discriminatory Intent in Eliminating Mexican American Studies
NPR reports on a big case from Arizona, home of the infamous S.B. 1070. Arizona has a long history of discrimination against persons of Mexican ancestry. Indeed, the Tucson School District continues to operate under a consent decree entered in a school desegregation lawsuit.
An Arizona law banning ethnic studies violated students’ constitutional rights, a federal judge ruled. His ruling made clear that the state showed discriminatory intent when it essentially shut down a Mexican-American studies program at Tucson Unified School District. “Both enactment and enforcement were motivated by racial animus,” federal Judge A. Wallace Tashima said in the ruling.
For more detail from the New York Times (including a link to the ruling), click here. In the 42-page ruling, Judge Tashima concluded that the elimination of the program in 2012 infringed on students’ First and 14th Amendment rights. The court has yet to decide on the appropriate remedy in the case..
“The court is convinced that decisions regarding the MAS program were motivated by a desire to advance a political agenda by capitalizing on race-based fears,” wrote Judge Tashima.
The ruling focuses primarily on the actions of two former Arizona schools superintendents who concluded that the Mexican-American studies program for middle and high schools, sometimes referred to as La Raza, violated A.R.S. 15-112. The Arizona law bans public and charter schools in Arizona from offering courses that “promote the overthrow of the United States government,” “promote resentment toward a race or class of people,” “are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group” or “advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.”
