The federal government has worked to implement the law related to school desegregation, including by promoting racial integration of public schools and actively ensuring that districts and school boards comply with federal orders to desegregate public schools. Past federal administrations have recognized the importance of the federal platform and bully pulpit and often acted to address persistent educational inequities and ongoing violations of students’ civil rights that states and districts left unresolved. This report from the Learning Policy Institute examines how a shift in the federal support for voluntary school integration efforts could impact students’ rights to access equal educational opportunities. We discuss the underlying research that has been used to inform and identify best practices for protecting students’ civil rights, the progress that has been made using research-based best practices, and the consequences of rolling back these protections for historically underserved students. This report is one of two based on white papers by the Learning Policy Institute commissioned by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in 2018. The other, Protecting Students' Civil Rights: The Federal Role in School Discipline​, addresses the federal role in protecting student civil rights as they relate to exclusionary and discriminatory school discipline.