{T} his year marks the 70th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education. For the past 70 years, race discrimination in public schools has been illegal and unconstitutional. In some cases, even the National Guard has been called out to enforce the law.

But in Evanston, Ill., it’s still a pre-Brown world. As reported elsewhere last year, Evanston Township High School offered racially segregated classes such as AP calculus for Hispanic students only, and English classes for only black students. It did that purportedly in the name of shrinking the achievement gap between Caucasian and non-Caucasian students. Yes, it’s hard to believe, but the doctrine of separate-but-equal still lives on, even today.

What was the school district’s defense to such obviously illegal division of students by race? Just that no one is forced to take such classes, so they are optional, and therefore not discriminatory. But that logic doesn’t fly.

First, it’s obvious that Evanston is engaged in brazen racial segregation. If Hispanic students take the math class designed specifically for Hispanic students, that means that non-Hispanic students will generally take math classes without any Hispanic students. The same is true for English classes that are only for black students. So much for diversity and inclusion!

Second, the rationale behind the classes sounds a lot like the arguments made by segregationists of days past, who contended that Jim Crow was actually good for black Americans. As Evanston’s superintendent, Marcus Campbell, stated: The classes give non-white students “a different, more familiar setting to kids who feel really anxious about being in an AP class.” You could be forgiven for mistaking this statement for something that segregationist Arkansas governor Orval Faubus might have said to defend racial separation.

Evanston isn’t just violating the Constitution. In 1964, Congress also passed a statute that deprives schools of federal funds if they discriminate based on race. That statute — called Title VI — gives the Department of Education and its Office for Civil Rights the authority to investigate public schools engaged in race discrimination and to force them to come into compliance with the law, under the threat of losing all federal funding.

Let there be no doubt: The text of Title VI doesn’t distinguish between “mandatory” and “optional” school programs. There is no exception to the bar on race discrimination for schools that merely encourage and facilitate racial segregation. And that’s obviously true. No one thinks that public schools could host “optional” racially segregated proms, homecoming events, back-to-school nights, or sports teams. The classroom is no different.

The Biden administration recently reminded us that a host of school programs can violate Title VI if the school fails to allow all students to participate equally. In guidance published after the Supreme Court struck down Harvard’s affirmative-action program, the Department of Education wrote:

A decision to restrict membership or participation in activities and spaces based on race . . . would raise significant concerns and trigger strict scrutiny under Title VI. In determining whether an opportunity to participate is open to all students, OCR may consider, for example, whether advertisements or other communications would lead a reasonable student, or a parent or guardian, to understand that all students are welcome to participate.

Yet Evanston remains undeterred, apparently. While the district has dropped the word “restricted” from the class descriptions in question, it nevertheless continues to encourage students to segregate themselves. An English II class is now described as one that “will emphasize examples that some individuals in the Black community identify as shared experiences.”

But if you thought that means that Caucasian students are welcome now, you’d be wrong. In an August 2023 interview, Superintendent Campbell explained that “if push came to shove,” and “there’s nothing else that works and that kid is white,” then the district would reluctantly let a Caucasian student enroll in a math class for another racial group. But how do you imagine that lands on the ears of a “reasonable student” who is wondering whether he or she is genuinely welcome to participate?

It’s time for systemic change. The Office for Civil Rights should be launching an investigation into Evanston. But unfortunately, it seems that politics have persuaded the powers that be to look the other way, even when it comes to Evanston’s previous blatant violations of Title VI.

Yet now is the time to course-correct. Anything other than a full investigation into Evanston is a complete abdication of the Department of Education’s legal responsibility to stomp out federal funding going to support racial discrimination. With classrooms once again being literally racially segregated, it’s never been more clear that the Department of Education isn’t doing enough to crack down on race discrimination in K–12 schools.

As Chief Justice Roberts wrote in his opinion striking down affirmative action once and for all, “eliminating race discrimination means eliminating all of it.” And in Evanston, Ill., they have 70 years of progress to start catching up to.

Leigh Ann O’Neill is the managing director of Legal Advocacy at FAIR, the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism. William E. Trachman is a former deputy assistant secretary in the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. He is the general counsel of Mountain States Legal Foundation.