State Constitutions and Racial Segregation: Minnesota in 2025

The Earl R. Larson Professor of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Law Appointment Lecture
When
February 27, 2025, 4:00 to 6:00 pm
Where
Walter F. Mondale Hall
Room 25

University of Minnesota Law School
229 19th Ave South
Minneapolis, MN 55455

Earl R. Larson Professor of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Law Myron Orfield

Brown v Board of Education declared that racial segregation “inherently” undermined the guarantee of equal protection of the laws. Five University of Minnesota graduates: Whitney Young, Clarence Mitchell; Roy Wilkins, Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale helped lead the national movement to enforce Brown through the great civil rights acts of 1964, 1965 and 1968. At the core of this great struggle was the profound commitment to provide Americans with equal opportunities in their schools and neighborhoods. From 1964-1985, equal opportunity dramatically grew. In the 1990s, these gains began to erode.       

Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard signals the stunning pace with which the federal courts are changing the meaning of the civil war amendments and the great federal civil rights acts. As federal protections fall away, can state constitutions and law provide safe harbors for core civil rights such as equal opportunity and freedom from racial segregation?

Two state court cases, Cruz-Guzman v. State (challenging the explosive growth of segregated schools) and Stair Step v. State (challenging the deepening inequality of segregated neighborhoods) ask Minnesota to use its constitution and laws to protect these basic rights as they disappear in the federal courts. 

As the United States Supreme Court limits the reach of federal civil rights laws, Professor Orfield will discuss how states like Minnesota can protect lost civil rights under their state constitutions and statutes. To illustrate this process, Orfield will discuss these two recent state civil rights cases brought under the Minnesota Constitution.

Myron Orfield is the director of the Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity. He has written three books, dozens of articles, and book chapters on region planning, state and local government law, spatial inequality, fair housing, school desegregation, charter schools, state and local taxation and finance, and land use law. The syndicated columnist Neal Peirce called him "the most influential demographer in America's burgeoning regional movement."  Vice President Walter F. Mondale '56 called Orfield “one of the nation’s leading experts on the Fair Housing Act.” Orfield's research has led to legislative, administrative, and doctrinal reforms at the federal and state levels in Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan, California, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Washington, Oregon, and Maryland.

CLE Credits
1.0 standard CLE credit requested, pending event code: #521865
Reception

A brief reception will follow the lecture from approximately 5 to 6 p.m. in Auerbach Commons on the plaza level of Mondale Hall. 

Accessibility Information

If you are unable to attend the in-person lecture, a video recording will be available and linked from this event page following the event.

Parking Information