text: School desegregation The effort to desegregate American public schools began in 1954 with Brown v. Board of Education. This landmark Supreme Court case established that racial segregation of children in public schools was in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which requires that states must not "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws". To properly enforce this legislation, the Supreme Court allowed district courts to use desegregation decrees obligating states to actively transition into racially nondiscriminatory school systems, with "all deliberate speed". Since the original decree did not include specific ways this could be done, beginning with Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education in 1971, the Supreme Court specifically defined the objective as eliminating "all vestiges of state imposed segregation" within school systems, including the limited use of busing, racial quotas, the creation of magnet schools and judicial placement of new schools, and the redrawing of school attendance zones. To stop judicial intervention in schools and end the consent decree through a court order, districts must demonstrate desegregation within six criteria defined in the Green v. County School Board of New Kent County ruling – which include, student assignment, faculty, staff, transportation, extracurricular activities, and facilities.
  Police use of violence
  Consent decrees have been signed by a number of cities concerning their police departments' use-of-force policies and practices, including Chicago, New Orleans, Oakland, Los Angeles (whose consent decree was lifted in 2013), Baltimore, Ferguson, Missouri, Seattle, Portland, and Albuquerque. On June 16, 2023, Minneapolis officials promised to enter into negotiations for a consent decree to be enforced by the DOJ in response to a scathing June 2023 US Department of Justice report resulting from a multiyear federal investigation into the "patterns and practices" of Minneapolis Police Department following the May 25, 2020 murder of George Floyd by MPD officers.
  Public law
  Consent decrees have been used to remedy various social issues that deal with public and private organizations, where a large number of people are often concerned even if they may not be members of either party involved. Examples have included Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and environmental safety provisions.