A judge on Tuesday released the Meridian Public School District from federal supervision stemming from a decades-old desegregation lawsuit that included a 2013 order for the district to improve disciplinary practices that disproportionately affected Black students.

During a hearing in federal court in Jackson, U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate approved Meridian schools leaving federal oversight, ruling the majority-Black district has eliminated the effects of past segregation and praising the district for reducing the number of suspensions that led some students to drop out of school.

“I am elated for the Meridian community,” Meridian Superintendent Dr. Amy Carter said on Wednesday. “I would like to thank the MPSD staff, students, parents, and our community for their support and hard work over the last decade in helping to make our district better for all students.”

The hearing and Wingate’s approval was the final step in an agreement that had been reached and filed with the court four years ago between the school district, the U.S. Justice Department and private plaintiffs, who had complained of racial discrimination in the district’s student disciplinary practices and contended they amounted to a “school-to-prison pipeline.”

“Meridian is no longer known for a school-to-prison pipeline,” Carter told Wingate during Tuesday’s hearing.

Attorneys for the Justice Department, a party in the original desegregation lawsuit, and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, one of the private parties, were on hand for the hearing and said they had no objection to Wingate granting unitary status to the Meridian school district. Being given unitary status designation shows the district has eliminated vestiges of prior segregation to the extent possible and no longer needs federal supervision.

During the 2022-2023 school year, nearly 92% of Meridian Public Schools’ 4,600 students were Black, while 3.1% were white and 2.7% were Hispanic or Latino, according to Mississippi Department of Education data.

Having unitary status also means the court system no longer supervises the school system’s student assignments, school realignments and other decisions.

“The Board of Trustees welcomes Judge Wingate’s ruling releasing MPSD from Department of Justice oversight,” said MPSD Board President Sally Gray. “The administration has made huge strides in recent years in providing behavioral interventionists and counselors for students as well as professional development for staff; these supports have contributed to better outcomes for our students. Our MPSD family and our community can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that this cloud has been lifted.”

The original desegregation lawsuit was filed by Meridian parents in 1965 against the Meridian Municipal Separate School District, then a majority-white district, seeking to end the city’s dual school systems. Students from Harris High, the district for Black students, wanted a chance to attend schools closer to where they lived.

The Justice Department soon joined the lawsuit and, two years later, a desegregation order was filed against the school district forcing it to end discrimination based on race and adhere to the Supreme Court’s 1954 landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision.

In the early 2010s, Meridian Public Schools was considering asking the federal court to release it from the desegregation order when the Justice Department began receiving complaints about its harsh disciplinary practices. Following an investigation, the Justice Department wrote that it found Black students “frequently received harsher disciplinary consequences, including longer suspensions, than white students for comparable misbehavior, even when the students were at the same school, were of similar ages, and had similar disciplinary histories.”

So in 2013 the Justice Department, the Meridian Public School District and private plaintiffs entered into a consent decree to address racial discrimination in student discipline.

Since the decree, Carter said, the district has implemented Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports, or PBIS, as a vehicle to teach students about making better decisions. In addition, the district has adopted Stephen Covey’s “Leader In Me” school-based leadership program to help students identify leadership qualities and learn important life skills.

“The community might ask what now and I would say that we are going to continue to do the things that made this possible and do the right thing by students while supporting our teachers,” she said.

Wingate’s order applies only to the Meridian Public School District. Thirty-one of the state’s 144 school districts continue to remain under federal desegregation orders, including the Lauderdale County School District.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.