Louisiana AG Announces End to 61 Years of Federal Oversight of Caddo Parish Schools as Desegregation Case Is Dismissed
The public school district of Caddo Parish, in northwestern Louisiana, has ended 61 years of federal court oversight. Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill announced on October 23 that the parties had filed a Joint Stipulation of Dismissal with Prejudice, closing the school desegregation litigation that had run since the civil rights era and returning control of the district to the elected Caddo Parish School Board.
The case, Jones v. Caddo Parish School Board, was filed in 1965 by Black parents and intervened in by the United States, in the federal court sitting in Shreveport. For decades afterward, federal court orders governed the district's student assignment and school operations. Shreveport is the parish seat of Caddo Parish and the largest city in northwestern Louisiana, and the school district is one of the area's largest employers.
"After 61 years, federal oversight of the Caddo Parish School Board has ended. The people of Caddo Parish have their school system back," Murrill said in the statement. "It's long past time to return authority to where it belongs, not with a federal judge, but with the people's elected representatives on the School Board." She thanked the Caddo Parish School Board and Harmeet Dhillon, the U.S. Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, for their work on the case.
The attorney general's office said the dismissal follows its Fifth Circuit victory in the Concordia Parish case, which reaffirmed that federal desegregation cases must end once all remaining parties agree to dismiss them. Over the past year and a half, Murrill's office has helped close a series of similar Louisiana cases: Plaquemines Parish in April 2025, DeSoto Parish in January 2026, Concordia Parish in July 2026 and Bossier Parish in August 2026, with Caddo Parish the latest.
With the dismissal in effect, the Caddo Parish district's day-to-day decisions no longer require federal court approval. The attorney general's office said it will keep working with other Louisiana districts still under such historical cases to evaluate and close them one by one.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 位于 Shreveport 的 Line Avenue School 红砖校舍，Caddo Parish 历史悠久的公立学校建筑。照片：Renelibrary，CC BY-SA 4.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / The red-brick Line Avenue School in Shreveport, a historic Caddo Parish public school building. Photo: Renelibrary, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
