The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) announced they are investigating allegations of discrimination at the Carroll Independent School District in Southlake, Texas. The civil rights enforcement arm of the Education Department opened three investigations into the school district based on complaints of discrimination against students based on race, gender, and national origin.

The investigation comes three years after a video of white high school students chanting a racial slur went viral on the internet. Following the viral video, the school district promised to make changes to address apparent racism but ultimately failed to do so. The school district published its Cultural Competence Action Plan (CCAP) in August 2020. This plan would require students and teachers to complete diversity training, institute a process for reporting and tracking incidents regarding racist bullying, and change the code of conduct for the school district to hold students accountable for their actions.

Shortly after the CCAP was released, conservative parents in the school district packed a school board meeting and formed the Southlake Families PAC, a political action committee directly opposed to the CCAP as well as teaching critical race theory. The PAC argued that the CCAP would create a “diversity police” and inevitably establish “reverse racism” against white children. Since the forming of the PAC, members won majority control of the school board, effectively killing off the CCAP from ever being instituted.

Last month, the district was in the spotlight for a second time after a Carroll administrator was recorded advising teachers that if they were to have a book on the Holocaust in their classroom, they should also provide a book from an “opposing” perspective.

The U.S. Department of Education OCR has a dual mission to ensure equal access to education while also protecting students from discrimination in any program or institution that receives federal financial assistance from the U.S. Department of Education. This includes state elementary and secondary schools, colleges, universities, and vocational schools.

The focus of OCR’s investigation into the Southlake Independent School District is to ensure the prohibition of discrimination based on race, color, and national origin as protected by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and sex discrimination which is prohibited under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.

An individual or organization that believes they are a victim of alleged discrimination by an educational institution that receives federal financial assistance must file a complaint with the OCR normally within 180 days of the discriminatory act. An investigation can take months to years to complete but recently has averaged around six months.

When the agency initiates the case, they are usually called compliance reviews. This permits OCR to target resources of the institution that the complaint alleges to have compliance issues. Once the investigation is complete, the OCR provides technical assistance to the institution to support those educational organizations to once again be compliant with civil rights laws under federal law.

To prove intentional discrimination, the evidence found need not contain “evidence of bad faith, ill will or any evil motive on the part of public officials” but it must show that a policy was adopted that favors an identifiable group, regardless if there was intent to harm the marginalized group (Williams v. City of Dothan, 745 F.2d 1406, 1414 (11th Cir. 1984)). Following the investigation, the Department of Education will look at direct or circumstantial evidence for proof that the discrimination occurred.