Katherine Robertson, chief counsel to the Alabama Attorney General and candidate for that office in 2026, believes it’s time to end racial quotas in the state’s public schools.
Many Alabama public school districts remain under desegregation orders that were originally enacted in the 1960s.
“As a practical matter, this mandated discrimination hurts students,” Robertson wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post this week. “Watered-down gifted programs force high-achieving students to compete for placements based on their appearance, rather than their talents or work ethic. Students suffer, too, when teachers are hired because they check the right racial box rather than for their ability to teach. If students who prevent others from learning by disrupting class are not disciplined, the ones who are well behaved pay the price.”
Robertson pointed to recent dismissals of similar orders in Tennessee and Louisiana that were done by the U.S. Department of Justice under President Trump.
The candidate discussed the issue further on WVNN’s “The Yaffee Program” Wednesday.
“We think that there are roughly 40 school systems in Alabama that still exist under these,” she explained. “And what it means is that on an annual basis, the school system has to certify the racial diversity of their teachers or racial diversity of their students, all the way down to school discipline and gifted programs.”
“And I just think it’s a shame, it is a costly thing,” she added. “You have to have lawyers working on it. You know, incessantly, year after year after year. The federal judges who put these orders in place died a long time ago, and so it’s just time to see these lifted.”
Robertson said she will make this a priority if she’s elected as the the next Attorney General for the Yellowhammer State.
“And I’d like to see our state negotiate with the Trump administration to get these things lifted across our state and let our schools operate freely without this burden hanging over them,” she said. “And I think especially because the progress is made on school choice, there’s just no argument that these are still needed. People have so many more opportunities than they’ve ever had before.”
Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” weekdays 9-11 a.m. on WVNN. You can follow him on X @Yaffee
