The Record of Judge Sonia Sotomayor on Critical Legal Rights for Women: Federal Anti-Discrimination Protections: Discrimination in Schools

Judge Sotomayor's Legal Record: Federal Anti-Discrimination Protections

July 2009

Discrimination in Schools

In a case alleging race discrimination, Gant v. Wallingford Bd of Ed., [1] an African American male elementary school student sued under Section 1981 and Section 1983 for violation of the right to equal protection, claiming racial hostility and a discriminatory transfer from first grade back to kindergarten. His family had moved to a new school district in the middle of the year from a neighboring town in Connecticut, where he was in the first grade. After two weeks at the new school, where he was not able to do the work, he was transferred to a kindergarten class in which he remained for the rest of the school year. The school was only one to two percent African-American, and the student was the only African American student in the first grade class. The district court granted summary judgment for the school.

Judge Cabranes wrote the decision for the Second Circuit, affirming the district court.[2] Judge Sotomayor agreed with the dismissal of the hostile environment claim, but strongly dissented on the transfer from first grade to kindergarten. She stated: "I consider the treatment this lone black child encountered during his brief time in Cook Hill's first grade to have been not merely