Professor Myron Orfield was 13 years old when U.S. District Judge Earl R. Larson ruled in the landmark federal case Booker v. Special School District No. 1 that Minneapolis Public Schools were illegally segregated. Orfield’s parents, proponents of desegregation, pulled him from Catholic school and enrolled him in a public school, where he was soon appointed to the Emergency School Aid Act Student Desegregation Advisory Board.
This marked the beginning of Orfield’s decades-long focus on civil rights and racial desegregation. He now serves as the Earl R. Larson Professor of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Law and director of the Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity at Minnesota Law.
Orfield’s latest research, “Equity in Place, Segregation, and the Phillips Neighborhood,” was recently published in the Georgetown Journal of Poverty Law and Policy. Orfield studied housing practices in the Phillips neighborhood — one of Minneapolis’ poorest areas — where government and philanthropic entities have provided housing developers $1 billion to improve education, public health, and public safety.
“Equity in Place, a powerful group of housing industry developers that has dominated Twin Cities’ affordable housing policy for years, got the money, but the conditions in Phillips have not improved,” says Orfield. “In fact, things are worse today. Phillips’ residents have the worst public health in the Twin Cities region, among the lowest-performing schools, and the highest violent crime rate in the metro. The affordable housing units that were built cost one-third more on average, and sometimes twice as much, as they would have in suburban areas eager for more affordable housing. These developers spend a great deal of money lobbying to keep units in poor neighborhoods and out of suburbs with high-quality schools.”
Orfield says that the money could have been better spent on community health, racially and economically diverse magnet schools, and violence prevention initiatives. He also argues that Equity in Place replaced one of the best regionwide fair housing systems in the nation with a system that rewards racial segregation of schools and neighborhoods.
“Not so long ago, the Met Council built 70% of affordable housing in the whitest and most affluent part of suburbia at low cost and with low rents,” he says. “But funds have now been redirected to racially segregated neighborhoods that have dismal outcomes.”
Orfield believes a strong regional housing plan would decrease housing prices and produce greater integration. “Every time a region in this country has implemented a regional housing plan, the area becomes more socially and racially diverse,” he says. “But these improvements are not possible with a housing industry that promotes concentrating affordable housing in racially segregated neighborhoods where it’s hard to find a good education. Housing and schools are deeply related to each other.”
Leveraging Cruz-Guzman
Orfield and his colleagues are supporting a region-wide approach to integration through Cruz-Guzman v. State of Minnesota; a lawsuit filed in 2015 by a group of multi-racial plaintiffs and Black civil rights organizations. The plaintiffs argued that segregated schools in Minnesota violated children’s rights to an adequate education. In 2023, the Minnesota Supreme Court held that parents did not need to prove that the State engaged in discriminatory behavior but only that segregated schools, whatever their cause, are a substantial factor in causing their children to receive an inadequate education. The court relied in part on research from the Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity. Orfield also submitted an amicus brief, and an article he wrote on the topic was cited by the chief justice.
The case has been returned to the trial court for an evidentiary hearing on whether segregated public schools cause their students to receive an inadequate education as compared to integrated schools. Orfield is serving as a pro bono expert witness for the plaintiffs.
“This decision may pave the way for unprecedented reform in remedying the harms of de facto segregation that persists in public schools,” says Orfield. “There is near-unanimous consensus of scholars and educators that a racially segregated education results in less learning and reduced achievement in later life. Cruz-Guzman is a once-in-a-generation lever to transform racially segregated public education systems nationwide since all U.S. state constitutions include an education clause.”
Forthcoming Research
With Cruz-Guzman opening opportunities to address racial and economic segregation in K-12 schools, Orfield and his colleagues are pursuing funding to study longer-term impacts to racially segregated schools, such as college graduation, employment, and incarceration rates. Through research combined with community engagement, they seek to design a regional system that combines magnet schools, cooperation between school districts, and housing to create true integration.
The Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity also is preparing to release its latest research on outcomes for 9th grade students in Twin Cities metro area schools. “Pathways to College and Pipelines to Prison” looks at student-level data from separate racial groups for students entering 9th grade to a minimum of five years after most graduate high school.
“Not surprisingly, student outcomes are particularly negative in the most segregated, non-white high schools,” Orfield says. “While there are many factors that contribute to outcomes, one factor is consistently found: Children surrounded by economically diverse and affluent peers more often achieve greater academic and life outcomes.”
The Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity also has a forthcoming report comparing the metropolitan councils in Portland, Oregon, and the Twin Cities. “These cities share similar racial demographics, but Portland has consistently enforced civil rights laws and employed a regional approach to housing,” says Orfield. “As a result, the city of Portland is growing 2.6 times faster than the cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, has as 40 percent lower violent crime rate, and has only one school with more than 90 percent non-white students compared to the Twin Cities with 189.”
The through-line for Orfield is a metropolitan approach to desegregation. “We know from research that this kind of approach does not cause the dreaded ‘white flight’ and we know that it’s the most effective method of creating stable integration,” he says. “The Twin Cities region should restore its commitment to equality by integrating housing and schools. Only in an integrated region can racial divisions even begin to heal.”