Rodriguez, Keyes, and Milliken: The 1970s Cases That Reconceptualized Segregation

• In Event: Language, Law, and Literacy in School Policy From the 19th to the 20th Centuries

Abstract

Three pivotal Supreme Court cases in the 1970s, San Antonio ISD v. Rodriguez (1973), Keyes v. School District No. 1 (1973), and Milliken v. Bradley (1974), laid out the legal definitions for finding a system to be engaged in unconstitutional segregation. Through a textual analysis of the legal holdings in these key cases, this paper lays out how the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on educational segregation shifted in the 1970s and how those decisions constrained the capacity of reformers and activists to seek judicial redress for segregation over the succeeding fifty years. This paper demonstrates the Supreme Court’s misconception about how segregation developed over American history and how it functioned in the twentieth-century United States.

Author

• Angus McLeod, Amherst College