Civil Rights Recent Case

Collins v. Thurmond

Discriminatory school discipline practices have been the subject of much controversy in recent years. In December 2018, the U.S. Department of Education, led by Secretary Betsy DeVos, rolled back Obama-era guidance aimed at reducing racial disparities in school discipline. The move drew opposition from both state attorneys general and civil rights leaders, who worried about its impact on marginalized students. Meanwhile, supporters saw the move as correcting unwarranted federal incursions into state educational issues. Recently, in Collins v. Thurmond, the Court of Appeals of the State of California for the Fifth Appellate District (the Fifth Appellate District) held that plaintiffs could proceed with a lawsuit against state-level defendants over racially discriminatory school discipline practices in the Kern High School District of Kern County (KHSD). The portion of the decision discussing California’s Equal Protection Clause advances school discipline reform and racial equality in education by affirming that plaintiffs can bring suit against educational policies with racially discriminatory effects and potentially obtain wholesale relief.

The Collins plaintiffs alleged that KHSD “implemented a district-wide disciplinary program that is biased toward minority students, students who speak limited English, and others similarly situated.” According to plaintiffs, around 2009-2010, state-level defendants, including the State Superintendent of Public Instruction and the California Department of Education, became aware of this bias but failed to act. Plaintiffs contended that in 2009, KHSD reported to the U.S. Department of Education that its expulsion rate was “54.47 per 1,000 students” as compared to a statewide average of “3.49 per 1,000 students.” Moreover, KHSD expelled white students at a rate of 18.7 per 1,000, Latino students at a rate of 65.85 per 1,000 students, and African American students a rate of 110.21 per 1,000 students. After reporting 2,040 suspensions in 2010, KHSD did not report any statutorily mandated suspension data to the state for the 2011-2012 school year, and in 2013, KHSD reported just 256 suspensions. Plaintiffs alleged that the decline in suspensions in 2013 resulted from a combination of students’ involuntary transfers to alternative schools and “voluntary” transfers coerced by the district’s “intimidation” of certain students and parents in a racially discriminatory way.

On the basis of these alleged facts, plaintiffs sued local-level and state-level defendants in the Superior Court of Kern County, alleging that defendants violated the federal Equal Protection Clause, the California Equal Protection Clause, and various state statutes. The claims against state-level defendants were premised on the theory that the State had failed to monitor KHSD appropriately and had failed to act to alleviate racial discrimination in KHSD in accordance with the state’s constitutional and statutory obligations.

While the suit against the local-level defendants was allowed to go forward and was eventually settled, the Superior Court dismissed “all claims brought against the state-level defendants . . . with prejudice following various demurrers.” Plaintiffs’ appealed the dismissals with respect to the state-level defendants. The Fifth Appellate District affirmed most of the dismissals but reversed as to California Equal Protection Clause claim and the claim for a writ of mandate under California Code of Civil Procedure section 1085.

Regarding the California Equal Protection claim, the court noted that while “California cases summarizing equal protection claims regularly recognize the similar federal standards . . . the California constitutional protections are independent from those provided in the Fourteenth Amendment.” The court first found that all students were “similarly situated” for the purpose of bringing an Equal Protection claim, rejecting the State’s argument that each student’s situation was unique so as to preclude such a claim. The court then upheld the Superior Court’s dismissal of the federal Equal Protection claim on the grounds that plaintiffs had not alleged that the State had a discriminatory motive in failing to cure the racial discrimination in KHSD. However, the court reversed as to the California Equal Protection claim. The court noted that education is a fundamental right under the California Constitution, and that the State thereby had positive obligations to avoid racially discriminatory effects in public schooling.

Responding to plaintiffs’ claim for a writ of mandate, the court began by noting its authority to “issue a writ of mandate to compel a public agency or officer to perform a mandatory duty.” The court wrote that only a violation of a ministerial duty or an abuse of discretion by the State could trigger a writ of mandate. Finding that the State had a duty to monitor KHSD for violations of federal law under 20 U.S.C. § 1703(f) and 42 U.S.C. § 2000(d), the court held that by not collecting suspension data from KHSD for the 2011-2012 school year, the State “abused their discretion to [monitor for violations] by failing to implement any review of the program they implemented to ensure they [were] receiving the data necessary to meet their duty.” The court thus concluded that plaintiffs properly stated a claim for a writ of mandate.

The court’s decision to allow plaintiffs’ lawsuit against the State to move forward under California’s Equal Protection Clause advanced school discipline reform and racial equality in public education in at least two ways. First, by affirming California’s rejection of pure lockstep jurisprudence and applying California’s discriminatory effects standard, the decision allows racial minorities to bring suit without having to prove discriminatory intent. Second, by rejecting the State’s contention that each student was uniquely situated, the court allowed the plaintiffs to rely on statistical data as evidence of the discriminatory effects of the school discipline policy. Other state courts should pay careful attention to this analytical framework as a way to provide similar protections to students within their jurisdictions.

By holding that California’s Equal Protection Clause provides more expansive protections that the federal Equal Protection Clause, the court made clear that plaintiffs alleging racial discrimination need not prove discriminatory intent. Given modern racial segregation in public education (including highly localized tracking and segregation similar to the type seen in KHSD), it is easy to imagine ways in which state and local education policies can have discriminatory effects without government officials evincing discriminatory intent. An effects standard thus allows racial minorities to bring colorable claims in instances such as Collins, where no readily apparent discriminatory intent existed, but the combination of bias and discretion in KHSD’s school discipline policies, along with the State’s failure to act, resulted in racial discrimination.

Further, by rejecting the State’s contention that each individual student’s situation was “unique,” the court allowed plaintiffs to use racial bias in the school discipline process along with aggregated statistical data to challenge racial bias in educational access, without having to prove discrimination on a case by case basis. Had the court held that the students were not similarly situated, as the State alleged, relief would have been difficult to obtain. First, plaintiffs would presumably have needed to demonstrate specific instances of white and minority students being treated differently when they had committed the same rules violation in the same way. Second, even if such evidence were available, courts attempting to grant remedies would be required not to merely identify bias in the process that might result in aggregate racial disparities, but to identify the specific factors in each student’s “unique” situation that created a biased outcome. By rejecting the State’s uniqueness argument, the court avoided this scenario and left open the possibility of broader relief against educational policies that, on the whole, have racially discriminatory effects.

The court’s analysis in this case is important not only because it protects California students, but also because of its potential persuasive value to other state courts dealing with similar claims. California is not unique. Every state constitution has some form of a right to public education and the vast majority of states have state constitutional equal protection guarantees. State courts considering racial disparities in school discipline and in access to high-quality public education more generally should adopt a state constitutional analysis similar to that of the Fifth Appellate District of California.