Teachers union sues over Trump administration’s deadline to end school diversity programs
- Share via
- A new federal lawsuit in challenges a Trump administration letter telling the nation’s schools and universities to eliminate “race-based” practices or risk losing their federal money
- The lawsuit alleges the letter is a free speech violation.
WASHINGTON — A new federal lawsuit in Maryland is challenging a Trump administration letter giving the nation’s schools and universities two weeks to eliminate “race-based” practices of any kind or risk losing their federal money.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday by the American Federation of Teachers union and the American Sociological Assn., says the Education Department’s Feb. 14 letter violates the 1st and 5th Amendments. Forcing schools to teach only the views supported by the federal government amounts to a violation of free speech, the organizations say, and the directive is so vague that schools don’t know what practices cross the line.
“This letter radically upends and re-writes otherwise well-established jurisprudence,” the lawsuit said. “No federal law prevents teaching about race and race-related topics, and the Supreme Court has not banned efforts to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in education.”
The memo, known as a Dear Colleague Letter, orders schools and universities to stop any practice that treats people differently because of their race, giving a deadline of this Friday. As a justification, it cites a Supreme Court decision banning the use of race in college admissions, saying the ruling applies more broadly to all federally funded education.
President Trump’s administration is aiming to end what the memo described as widespread discrimination in education, often against white and Asian American students.
Schools are on alert after the Department of Education said it would cut federal funding unless they abolished diversity, equity and inclusion programs, potentially including culturally themed campus housing and graduation ceremonies.
At stake is a sweeping expansion of the Supreme Court ruling, which focused on college admissions policies that considered race as a factor when admitting students. In the Feb. 14 memo, the Education Department said it interprets the ruling to apply to admissions, hiring, financial aid, graduation ceremonies and “all other aspects of student, academic and campus life.”
The lawsuit says the Education Department is applying the Supreme Court decision too broadly and overstepping the agency’s authority. It takes issue with a line in the letter condemning teaching about “systemic and structural racism.”
“It is not clear how a school could teach a fulsome U.S. History course without teaching about slavery, the Missouri Compromise, the Emancipation Proclamation, the forced relocation of Native American tribes” and other lessons that might run afoul of the letter, the lawsuit said.
The department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the memo, Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights, had said schools’ and colleges’ diversity, equity and inclusion efforts have been “smuggling racial stereotypes and explicit race-consciousness into everyday training, programming, and discipline.
Amid President Trump’s attack on DEI, California schools and colleges aim to keep diversity efforts intact while skirting clashes with the administration.
“But under any banner, discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin is, has been, and will continue to be illegal,” Trainor wrote in the memo.
The lawsuit argues the so-called Dear Colleague letter is so broad that it appears to forbid voluntary student groups based on race or background, including Black student unions or Irish American heritage groups. The memo also appears to ban college admissions practices that weren’t outlawed in the Supreme Court decision, including recruiting efforts to attract students of all races, the lawsuit said.
It asks the court to stop the department from enforcing the memo and strike it down.
The American Federation of Teachers is one of the nation’s largest teachers unions. The sociological association is a group of about 9,000 college students, scholars and teachers. Both groups say their members teach lessons and supervise student organizations that could jeopardize their schools’ federal money under the memo.
Binkley writes for the Associated Press.
Sign up for Essential California
The most important California stories and recommendations in your inbox every morning.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
