UPDATE: On September 3, 2021, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights dismissed this complaint. See the letter here.
On March 30, 2021, Parents Defending Education (now Defending Education) filed a complaint against Webster Groves School District in Webster Groves, Missouri, with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. The complaint claimed the district was breaking Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a law that bans discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in programs that receive federal funds.
On June 3, 2020, Superintendent John Simpson wrote a blog post saying that “inequitable systems and structures” exist “within our school district.” According to Simpson, those systems disadvantage “Black children” and “[c]learly” need “much” more work to dismantle. The complaint argued that this admission raised concerns the district had taken federal funds while violating Title VI. It pointed out that when Princeton University’s president made similar claims in 2020, the Office for Civil Rights quickly opened an investigation.
Read the full complaint below:
