A long-running effort to help disadvantaged students of color in Los Angeles schools is under legal challenge by a group that claims the nation’s second-largest school system is discriminating against white students.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in federal court, targets efforts to bring resources to underserved schools going back decades and rooted in battles over forced and voluntary integration.

Filed in the Central District of California by 1776 Project Foundation, the suit alleges that L.A. Unified discriminates against white students because of a program that provides more resources to schools where 70% or more of the students are nonwhite — which takes in the vast majority of district campuses.

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The suit says the district “channels opportunities, preferences, funding and outreach primarily to specific racial groups, while systematically excluding or failing to allow other students who similarly could benefit from the same favorable academic support.”

The district is acting illegally under both the California and the federal Constitution, the suit alleges.

Without commenting on the lawsuit, district officials said: “Los Angeles Unified remains firmly committed to ensuring all students have meaningful access to services and enriching educational opportunities.”

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L.A. school board member Tanya Ortiz Franklin said such a lawsuit overlooks the actual needs of students.

“My greatest fear is ... that poor children of color will continue to be overlooked, under-supported, and ultimately unable to achieve their greatest potential because they don’t yet have the time, money or access to amplify their needs on a similar scale,” Franklin said.

The suit claims that 600 campuses have an illegal advantage while about 100 do not. The lawsuit alleges that students in the targeted schools receive benefits that include smaller class sizes and that they also receive preferential treatment for entry into sought-after magnet programs.

“The District engages in — and publicly touts — a program of overt discrimination against a new minority: White students,” the lawsuit states. “And it is not just students of European descent who are the victims of the District’s poor treatment. Students of Middle Eastern descent are also part of the disfavored group, as are others who fall on the wrong side of the District’s bizarre racial and ethnic line-drawing.”

Voices critical of the lawsuit quickly emerged.

The targeted programs “were part of a court decree to remedy decades of discrimination in underresourced schools,” said longtime civil rights attorney Mark Rosenbaum, who is a veteran of civil rights lawsuits against the school system. As a partial remedy, “the resources were not directed to students of particular races or ethnicities, but rather to all students attending separate and unequal schools. The lawsuit is one that only a fan of Jim Crow could support.”

The lawsuit also was criticized by Tyrone C. Howard, director of UCLA’s Center for the Transformation of Schools.

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“This lawsuit is a misguided attempt to rewrite the history of school desegregation in the country,” Howard said. “There are bodies of research that have identified deep-seated inequities affecting students of color historically and contemporarily.”

Howard called the lawsuit a manifestation of Trump administration efforts “to make the case that white students suffered just as much as students of color, which just isn’t true.”

The Trump administration has issued executive orders banning all diversity efforts. Under threat of losing federal funding, universities and school districts have moved to end, rename or reorganize diversity, equity and inclusion programs. California officials are among those who are opposing the federal mandates in court.

The U.S. Supreme Court has banned racial preferences in the college admissions process, emboldening other moves against diversity efforts or programs tailored to help particular groups of students.

In response to an earlier lawsuit — and to the Supreme Court’s recent rulings — L.A. Unified in 2024 rebranded a program set up to help Black students to instead assist all students who needed the extra support at targeted schools.

Pedro Noguera, the dean of USC’s Rossier School of Education, called the new litigation an “increasingly common” tactic from conservative groups “who want to claim reverse discrimination based on the idea that helping low-income kids of color hurts affluent white students. However, there is no empirical evidence to support this claim.”

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But to Lance Christensen, a critic of current top state education officials, the issues in the lawsuit have merit.

“Categorizing schools based on racial or ethnic composition ... raises serious constitutional questions,” said Christensen, vice president of California Policy Center. “Favoring minority students over white and Middle Eastern counterparts as some vestige of a poor legal decision in the 1970s can be seen as discriminatory and potentially unconstitutional in 2026.”

“While well-intended, policies that single out specific demographic groups for differential treatment risk deepening divisions and fueling legal challenges that distract from the core mission of education,” Christensen said.

The lawsuit states that 1776 Project has standing because its members include an L.A. Unified parent who was unable to get into a magnet school of choice.

Magnet schools are special programs established decades ago to promote voluntary integration. Magnet enrollment was once tied strictly to racial quotas. This framework frequently worked to the advantage of white students — because there were relatively fewer white students competing for the number of magnet slots reserved for white students.

Today, magnet programs have become a general recruitment strategy in a school system with declining enrollment. Some magnets are virtually all students of color because few or no white students apply.

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Magnet funding is mainly spent on providing bus transportation for students to attend these special programs outside their neighborhoods.

A separate component of L.A. Unified education efforts includes providing additional support to schools that are at least 70% nonwhite. As described on the L.A. Unified website, these schools have smaller class sizes. According to the suit, the difference is as much as 25 students per teacher compared with an average of 34.5 to one teacher.

According to state data, LAUSD is about 74% Latino, 10% white, 7% Black and 3.3% Asian. Total enrollment is about 380,000.

In the big picture, the district currently allocates extra resources based mainly on which schools are performing worse on academic measures, not race.

Federal funds also typically benefit such schools through Title I funding, which is set aside for schools with high concentrations of poverty. These extra federal resources are not based on race.

The 1776 Project describes its mission as advocating “for the principle of equal rights for all by opposing race-based discrimination in public education.”

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L.A. Unified’s integration programs have periodically survived legal challenges since the magnet program began. The federal court system has become increasingly conservative as a result of appointees from Republican administrations — possibly opening the door to new litigation.