Real Stories: Powel vs. Ridge
Powell v. Ridge
Pennsylvania
In the late 1990s, Philadelphia's public schools had the highest number of minority students in Pennsylvania. Parents, local leaders, and city officials struggled with limited resources to support and improve the city's educational school system for their children. But they quickly learned that the state's school funding formula favored school districts with high proportions of white students.
The students, parents, and the city of Philadelphia sued the state under regulations adopted to enforce Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Consistent with established law, the case moved forward in the courts until the Supreme Court ruling in Alexander v. Sandoval stopped it in its tracks. Under the Court's ruling in Sandoval, the plaintiffs would have to prove that the state's funding formula was created with the intent to discrimination, not just the formula has an unjustified racially disparate impact.
This new rule posed such a difficult and unnecessary barrier that the case is now inactive.
