Federal appeals court ends decades of oversight of Louisiana school board
A federal appeals court shut down six decades of oversight in Concordia Parish, but the case began with Black families in Ferriday fighting for access to white schools.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ended six decades of federal oversight of the Concordia Parish School Board on July 14, closing a desegregation case that began in 1965 when Black families in Ferriday sued for access to all-white schools. The three-judge panel, Circuit Judges Stewart, Willett and Wilson, wrote that the litigation had reached its seventh decade and was over once the remaining parties filed a Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(ii) stipulation of dismissal.
The ruling ended appellate case No. 25-30698, consolidated with No. 26-30074, and grew out of district court case No. 1:65-CV-11577 in the Western District of Louisiana. The dismissal required no further order from the district judge and left no authority for continued proceedings.
The case started in a parish that was still segregated, where a violent offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan operated and where federal intervention followed the original lawsuit. White families later fled Ferriday as schools integrated, while Ferriday remained mostly Black and low-income and neighboring Vidalia stayed mostly white.
The modern case also reached beyond the original school board. Delta Charter Group intervened in 2012, and a 2013 consent order required the charter operator to comply with the district’s desegregation decree. That order was used to push the mostly white charter school to prioritize Black students in an effort to build a more integrated student body.
The case had never been declared unitary in earlier proceedings. In November 2025, U.S. District Judge Dee Drell refused to dismiss the matter immediately and ordered a hearing on unitary status. The remaining parties, the United States, Delta Charter Group and the Concordia Parish School Board, later jointly stipulated to dismissal, ending the case.
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill welcomed the decision on behalf of the state. “The people of Concordia Parish elected their school board to govern the schools and that authority belonged back where it should be,” she said.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
