LAUSR

ABSTRACT Since 1954 the Supreme Court has oscillated between two interpretations of Brown v. Board of Education, one endorsing a color-blind interpretation of equal protection, the other emphasizing equal educational opportunity. In the 1960s and 1970s, the federal courts inched toward the latter. Recent Supreme Court decisions have embraced the former. The Obama and Biden administrations tried to give schools more discretion to take race into account. The Trump administration, in contrast, is trying to purge schools of racial classifications and their “proxies.” The result is a strange inversion of previous institutional patterns.