A Utah School District Agrees to Settle Accusations of Racial Harassment Against Black and Asian-American Students
The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division and the United States Attorney’s Office for Utah announced a settlement agreement with Davis School District in Utah to address race discrimination in the district’s schools, including serious and widespread racial harassment of Black and Asian-American students. The department opened its investigation in July 2019 under Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The investigation revealed persistent failures to respond to reports of race-based harassment of Black and Asian-American students by district staff and other students. The department’s review, which focused on 2015-2020, found hundreds of documented uses of the N-word, among other racial epithets, derogatory racial comments, and physical assaults targeting district students at dozens of schools. The department concluded that for years, Davis’s ineffective response left students vulnerable to continued harassment and that students believed the district condoned the behavior. The department also found that Davis disciplined Black students more harshly than their white peers for similar behavior and that Davis denied Black students the ability to form student groups while supporting similar requests by other students. Black and Asian-American students are each roughly 1 percent of the approximately 73,000 students enrolled in the district.
