Katherine Robertson is a Republican candidate for Alabama attorney general. She is chief counsel to Steve Marshall, the current attorney general.
In 2023, when it struck down race-based admissions policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, the Supreme Court declared that “the time for making distinctions based on race had passed.” Now, as the court prepares to issue a ruling in Louisiana v. Callais on whether race-based congressional districts required by Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act are constitutional, the nation waits to see if the court meant it.
In Alabama, however, a vestige of the 1960s is preventing the state from eliminating racial distinctions in the spirit of these rulings. A number of public school districts remain under orders — with no expiration date — that require them to hire teachers, enroll students in gifted programs and enforce discipline all based on race.
What courts once deemed necessary in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education to meaningfully give minority students equal protection under the law now requires hundreds of Alabama’s public schools to consider and document race in all aspects of school functions. The goal? Attaining an elusive “unitary status” designation that all vestiges of government-mandated segregation have been cured. Hundreds of thousands of dollars can be wasted in the process.
As a practical matter, this mandated discrimination hurts students. Watered-down gifted programs force high-achieving students to compete for placements based on their appearance, rather than their talents or work ethic. Students suffer, too, when teachers are hired because they check the right racial box rather than for their ability to teach. If students who prevent others from learning by disrupting class are not disciplined, the ones who are well behaved pay the price. It is hard to believe that federal judges could find this acceptable in 2026. The high court has stated clearly that “racial discrimination in public education is unconstitutional,” particularly when preferences based on skin color have “no end … in sight.”
Thankfully, the Trump administration is charting a new course. Last year, the Justice Department dismissed a 1966 desegregation order against a Louisiana school district. The administration explained that it was righting a “historical wrong” and “freeing the local school district of federal oversight.” In February, the administration dismissed an order in Tennessee, also from 1966.
These changes are giving Alabama a historic opportunity. Federal courts must no longer accept the premise that Alabama is the same place that it was 60 years ago. Our expansive opportunities for school choice alone ensure that no student is confined to a school due to race, Zip code or income.
To successfully end these court orders, the state government will need the affected school districts to cooperate so that Attorney General Steve Marshall can negotiate on their behalf. We will then have the chance to work with the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division to untie the hands of school districts and end the prioritization of race over merit. When we are successful, we can help other states do the same and, in the process, force federal courts to grapple with whether the federal government can continue to intrude on any aspect of state sovereignty, even under the guise of righting historical wrongs.
If “eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,” as the court said in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, then it is time we eliminate all of it in Alabama’s schools. The state’s schools should be free to focus on the only thing that matters: educating the nation’s future leaders and teaching them that the pursuit of knowledge, not racial equity, is the greatest chance at happiness and liberty.
Alabama has moved past the dark historical chapter of viewing people by their race. We are ready to finally — and decisively — turn the page.
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