ATLANTA (AP) — A federal judge has ruled that the Fulton County school system no longer discriminates based on race and can be freed from a 34-year-old desegregation order.
U.S. District Judge Robert Vinings agreed Thursday to a settlement reached by the school system and black parents who were plaintiffs in a lawsuit.
The two sides agreed in March to a plan that will phase out the district's race-based, voluntary busing program that has allowed black students from south Fulton County, home of Atlanta, to attend predominantly white north Fulton schools.
The county's schools are the last in metro Atlanta to be freed from court supervision under similar orders to desegregate. DeKalb County's ended in 1996, while an order for the city of Atlanta schools was lifted in 1975.