Mexican Americans have a long history in the struggle to end school segregation and achieve educational equality. Rubén Donato and Jarrod Hanson trace that history through a series of court cases that show how their fight for desegregation both intersects with and differs from the more well-known struggle of Black Americans. In some cases, Mexican…

Sixty-five years after the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education, the federal and judicial role in school desegregation has declined. In a more difficult political and legal environment, it has fallen on school districts to develop and implement voluntary integration plans through diversity-minded student assignment…

The Texas Supreme Court ruled that students' rights to participate in extracurricular activities were not on the same level as rights to free speech and found that the state law barring failing students from extracurricular activities was rationally related to a legitimate state interest in educational quality. (PGD)

A recent Supreme Court decision on a First Amendment case involving a teacher in Texas illustrates how teachers' and other public employees' rights to freedom of speech face serious erosion. The problem is deciding whether grievances fall into the protected area of "public concern" or the unprotected area of a "purely private…

Discusses the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in "San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez," handed down 10 years ago, concerning financial equity in the Texas school finance program. Summarizes Justice Powell's majority opinion and Justice Marshall's dissent and introduces the two following articles assessing the decision's…

In "Doe v. Plyler" the court unanimously held that the denial of a free public education to illegal alien children is a violation of the equal protection clause. Examines how the court came to its conclusion. (Author/IRT)

A wrongful arrest/racial discrimination suit in Livingston, Texas ended unfavorably for the parents of an African-American fifth-grader complaining of unfair treatment by his teacher and classmates. The parents' complaint should have been remedied, short of their having to make a federal case of miscommunication. (MLH)

In a June 2000 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a southern Texas district's policy authorizing student-led and student-initiated prayer at football games violates the Establishment Clause. The Court viewed this policy as having a sham secular purpose and a primary effect of endorsing religion. (MLH)

Discusses federal district court decision dismissing suit brought by three Texas high school students claiming that their Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights were violated when police, at request of administrators, entered school and rounded up, handcuffed, and detained them and 11 other students who "hung out" with a student arrested…