Brumfield v. Louisiana State Board of Education

Litigation: The Department of Justice, in September 2014, used a 1975 federal desegregation order, Brumfield v. Dodd, 405 F. Supp. 338 (E.D. La. 1975), to prohibit children in affected schools from participating in the voucher program on the purported grounds that by using a voucher to attend a private school, the children would cause the public schools they left to be less integrated. Opposed to DoJ effort to regulate schools accepting vouchers: Louisiana Black Alliance for Educational Options

Outcomes: The department was unable to produce evidence to support their claim, and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals observed, “DOJ’s attempt to shoehorn its regulation of the voucher program into an entirely unrelated forty-year-old case represents more than ineffective lawyering.” The Court said DOJ attempted “to regulate the program without any legal judgment against the state.” On November 11, 2015, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2-1 decision overturned a district court ruling that granted the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) pre-clearance review of the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP), arguing that the lower court exceeded its scope of authority. The November 2015 ruling by the Fifth Circuit reversed this infringement on the LSP’s freedom.

Why it Matters: Vouchers provide access to educational options. Using a decades old desegregation court ruling to place restrictions on schools serving the children desegregation orders were originally designed to protect is a back-door effort to advance anti-voucher ideological beliefs and would have set a harmful precedent for the role of the federal government in state education programs.

Effects: Louisiana’s voucher program continues to serve children who need options in education, without intrusion by the heavy hand of the federal government.