los angeles classroom lawsuit discriminate white students racism
© Los Angeles Unified School DistrictThe lawsuit alleges that the LAUSD’s current desegregation mandates amount to discriminatory practices that harm non-minority students by giving preferential treatment to others.
Los Angeles schools discriminate against white students under the city's longstanding desegregation policy, a new lawsuit from a conservative group claims.

The suit says that white students suffer "inferior treatment and calculated disadvantages" in LA public schools, which enroll a majority Black, Hispanic and Asian students.

The group that filed the suit, 1776 Project Foundation, is challenging decades-old desegregation rules in the LA Unified School District that critics say continue to divide students along racial lines. The defendants are listed as the LAUSD Board of Education, the Board President, and Superintendent Alberto Carvalho.

The lawsuit alleges that the LAUSD's current desegregation mandates amount to discriminatory practices that harm non-minority students by giving preferential treatment to others.

In the 1970's, the Predominantly Hispanic, Black, Asian, or Other Non-Anglo (PHBAO) program was implemented as a remedy to racism at LAUSD. Under the program, public schools with a student population of more than 70% "HBAO" qualify to have smaller class sizes, more chances for parent involvement, additional school staff, and more.

"In today's Los Angeles, over 600 public schools qualify as PHBAO," reads the suit. "Fewer than 100 do not. So, the non-PHBAO schools are a minority. And, for students who attend non-PHBAO schools, the District provides inferior treatment and calculated disadvantages."

Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvahlo
© CBS News/GettyLos Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvahlo
The group behind the lawsuit argues that these efforts now amount to reverse discrimination and are seeking to overhaul policies that they claim allocate resources on the basis of race or ethnicity.

"This is the most blatant example of racial discrimination by a major school district in this country," Ryan James Girdusky, the group's founder, told the LA Times.

Victims of the "overt discrimination" include not only white students, but Middle Eastern kids, too, who are classified under "the disfavored group...who fall on the wrong side of the District's bizarre racial and ethnic line-drawing," reads the suit.

The lawsuit is just the latest headache for Superintendent Carvalho, who is already under fire after findings revealed that more than half of third graders in LA's public schools are failing to read at grade level.