civil rights

The Department of Education Office of Civil Rights named the University of North Texas among the universities it is investigating for “race-exclusionary practices” in their graduate programs.

The Education Department’s civil rights branch is losing nearly half its staff in the Trump administration’s layoffs, leading to the closure of the DOE civil rights office in Dallas. The closure also leaves a backlog of thousands of complaints from students and families in limbo.

The Legal Defense Fund and law firm Arnold & Porter are urging the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to release findings from a years-long investigation into civil rights complaints in the Carroll Independent School District.

KERA's Recovering the Stories video series chronicles historic communities of color across Dallas, taking a closer look at how subjects like police brutality and gentrification have disproportionately affected these neighborhoods.

After Carroll ISD declared an impasse in negotiations over trying to settle discrimination claims, a parent said the district wasn’t taking responsibility for failing to keep students safe.

Four complaints of civil rights violations based on sexual orientation, race, and sex have been under investigation in Carroll ISD since 2021 by the Office for Civil Rights. Attorneys for the families say the OCR this week urged the district to resolve those complaints.

The high court declined to hear a Louisiana case involving a police officer who was injured during a 2016 protest and sued its organizer.

Darryl George, an 18-year-old Black student at Barbers Hill High School east of Houston, has been repeatedly suspended for his dreadlocks. Lingering questions over whether the CROWN Act pertains to the district's hair-length policy were at center of Thursday’s trial.

The complaint claims Bonham ISD and a city court discriminated against both Black students and disabled students by creating a hostile environment at school. The groups also filed a separate complaint against Corpus Christi ISD with the Texas Education Agency.

Darryl George, an 18-year-old Black student at Barbers Hill High School, has faced disciplinary action all school year because he wears dreadlocks and has refused to cut them. The school district claims its issue is with George's hair length and not his hairstyle, the latter of which is protected by a new Texas law.

Frederick Douglass Haynes III, pastor of Dallas' Friendship-West Baptist Church, now heads the Rainbow Push Coalition, succeeding civil rights icon Jesse Jackson.

The move comes amid calls for further regulation of nascent artificial intelligence technology.