March 18, 2025 Story by: Editor
Fresno Unified School District (FUSD) is facing a federal lawsuit alleging discrimination against non-Black students in certain academic programs.
The lawsuit, filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation on behalf of the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation, challenges the district’s Office of African American Academic Acceleration (A4 Office), which was created in 2017 to support Black students.
Currently, the A4 Office operates 13 programs with a budget of $12 million, specifically serving Black middle and high school students. According to the lawsuit, Fresno Unified primarily promotes these programs to Black parents and students, allegedly excluding the rest of the student population. Administrators are accused of instructing teachers to directly contact only Black families about these opportunities.
Fresno Unified serves over 70,000 students, with approximately 5,100 being Black. Black students in the district reportedly underperform academically compared to other demographics, with 16% of Black elementary students reading at grade level, compared to the district-wide average of 22%. The A4 Office provides services such as summer reading programs, math camps for Black fifth and sixth graders, and college preparatory courses, which, according to the lawsuit, are marketed exclusively to Black students.
Although the district’s official materials describe these programs as being “for African Americans,” they do not explicitly state that non-Black students are prohibited. However, the lawsuit claims that when non-Black students inquire, they are redirected to other services. “The district’s purpose is to create a racially segregated environment in these programs as much as possible and to give preferential treatment to certain students because of their race,” the lawsuit states.
Fresno Unified reports that during the 2023-2024 academic year, 1,212 Black students—representing 23% of the district’s total Black student population—participated in A4 Office programs. The district also claims these programs served nearly 8,000 students of various racial and ethnic backgrounds in the same period.
Wilson Freeman, an attorney for Pacific Legal Foundation, criticized the district’s policies, stating, “It is unfair and unconstitutional to gate access to valuable educational programs based on a child’s race, regardless of whether the exclusion is explicit or implicit. Taxpayer-funded academic support programs should be available to all students based on need, not race. FUSD’s practices violate multiple legal protections, including the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, the Civil Rights Act, and California’s Proposition 209.”
A spokesperson for Fresno Unified declined to comment on the pending litigation.
Source: The Sun
