More progress is needed to achieve equity in racial and gender representation in the push to diversify the physical sciences. In order to continue moving towards representation and equity, there is a need for more analytic tools that can help us understand where we are and how we got here. This may also enable meaningful systemic change. In this…

On March 29, 2021, the Religious Exemption Accountability Project filed a class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education on behalf of 33 sexual and gender minority students who reported discrimination at institutions that have a Title IX religious' exemption. Of the 25 institutions named in the suit, 14 have accredited social work…

"Critical Race Theory" (CRT) is the term commonly applied in public debates to controversial racially charged curricula and initiatives in the public schools, as well as various parallel trainings and programs commonly being adopted in school and other settings. Initially, CRT was confined to the niche circles of legal academia from…

Purpose: A significant and growing body of LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) research examines the experiences of students, employees, and the substance of leadership training. This project aims to complement this work by taking a macro-level look at the broader legal and policy issues that may constrain or enhance a school…

This essay examines the significance of the fortuitous Fisher v. University of Texas Supreme Court decision within a broader historical framework of similar affirmative action legal disputes. The author locates Fisher among a historical trajectory of manoeuvres intended to destabilise modest Civil Rights Era advances toward racial justice.…

Monetary sanctions, also known as legal financial obligations (LFOs), are a highly consequential yet underexplored element of the criminal legal system. LFOs consist of fines, fees, costs, restitution, surcharges, and other financial penalties that are imposed on individuals when they encounter the criminal legal system. Drawing on data from a…

Purpose: "Abbeville v. South Carolina" was a nearly three-decade long school funding lawsuit initiated by the education leaders of South Carolina's most rural and impoverished school districts that primarily educated students of color. Recently, the State Supreme Court dismissed the entire case. Guided by a multiperspective framework of…

Empirical data show that the COVID-19 pandemic deepened and exacerbated social inequalities, to the detriment of low-income communities of color. Using the law as a conceptual framework and legal research methodology, this study examines education law against the exacerbated social inequalities low-income students of color faced during the…

Background: For over 50 years, special education has been used as a tool to maintain racial segregation, particularly in schools located in low-income communities of color. This study utilized tenets found in disability critical race theory (DisCrit) and inclusive school leadership literature to examine the perceptions, practices, and challenges…

Non-consensual sterilization is one of the characteristic historical abuses that took place mainly in the first half of the 20th century. People with intellectual disability (ID) were a prime target as part of the ideology of negative eugenics. In certain jurisdictions, laws were in force for several decades that permitted sterilization without…

The history of intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) in the United States is, in many ways, a triumphant story reflecting an increasingly progressive attitude acknowledging the equality of all persons. The law now recognizes people with IDD as citizens, possessing an equal right to education, health care, and employment--each of which…

The enduring condition of racial and ethnic segregation in schools and housing in metropolitan Hartford, Connecticut, is rooted in historical and contemporary racial discrimination and in practices and policies that exacted disparate harm on Black and Latinx people. School segregation both reflects and reinforces segregation in housing that was…

The advent of critical race theory (CRT) in legal scholarship changed the way in which legal scholars think about race and racism in at least three ways. First, CRT scholars argue that the problem of racial justice is fundamental to American law, whereas the previous generation of civil rights scholars saw racial justice as a problem of…

As a Mexican American school desegregation case, historians, legal scholars, and educational researchers have all explored "Mendez v. Westminster's" significance. Each discipline, with its own modes of analysis, has constructed a distinct interpretation of the 1940s California case. However, in focusing on different aspects of…

In 2011, the state of Arizona banned the highly successful Tucson Unified School District Mexican American Studies program through the law ARS § 15-112. This article is a Critical Race Theory "counternarrative" regarding the role of statistics in the constitutional challenge to this state law. Through firsthand accounts of this process,…