The Colorado Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (Committee) has investigated the effect of school attendance boundaries—also known as “catchment areas”—on school segregation. The Committee has focused in particular on 20 U.S.C. §1703(c), a long-overlooked provision in the federal Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 that provides both:
1. A qualified individual right to public school choice, as a federal civil right; and
2. A reliable legal basis for taking segregative/integrative effects—as defined by the law—into account when drawing attendance boundaries and setting school-assignment policies.
The jurisdiction of the U.S. Commission, and thus of the Committee, encompasses deliberate discrimination or disparate impact that affects civil rights. This report addresses deliberate discrimination or disparate impact in violation of 20 U.S.C. §1703(c).