WASHINGTON—In what many are considering a big win for the nation’s school kids, and for teachers’ freedom to teach honest history, the GOP Trump administration’s Education Department dropped its attempt to ban diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) teaching in U.S. public schools.
Trump Education Secretary Linda McMahon had her top staffers send a “Dear Colleague” letter almost a year ago to every school district in the U.S.: Stop teaching DEI, certify that you did, or your federal grant money would get yanked.
The Teachers/AFT, the American Sociological Association, AFT Maryland, and a school district in Eugene, Ore., challenged the DEI ban in federal court in Baltimore, and won. U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher not only overturned that DEI ban, the certification requirement, and accompanying grant threat, but issued an injunction against them.
AFT and its allies showed “neither agency action was promulgated in accordance with the Administrative Procedures Act” and its processes for appealing federal agency rulings, the judge wrote. “Both actions violate important constitutional rights. Both actions must therefore be vacated.”
“The administration is entitled to express its viewpoints and promulgate policies in line with those viewpoints,” the judge said. “But it must do so within the procedural bounds Congress outlined. It may not do so at the expense of constitutional rights.”
Trump’s Justice Department first appealed the union’s win to the federal circuit court in Richmond, Va., which covers Maryland. But on January 21, Trump’s Assistant Attorney General Brent Shumate dropped the appeal. Neither the Education Department nor the Justice Department revealed that.
“Today marks a final defeat in the Trump-Vance administration’s attempt to require school districts throughout the nation to censor lessons, abandon student support programs, and certify their compliance with the administration’s unlawful interpretation of civil rights,” AFT said.
Its president, New York City civics teacher Randi Weingarten, called the department’s decision to drop the case “a huge victory for kids.”
“With the stroke of a pen, the administration tried to take a hatchet to 60 years of civil rights laws meant to create educational opportunity to for all kids. They attempted to rewrite and redefine opportunity to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion, and threatened schools and districts with penalties if they failed to comply. It took a union to stand in the stead of kids and educators who feared retribution from the government.”
“When you fight, you don’t always win, but you never win without a fight. We are proud this case has once again halted the administration’s pattern of using executive fiat to undermine America’s laws that enshrine justice and opportunity for all.”
In the initial ruling for the union, the association, and their allies, Judge Gallagher in Baltimore called McMahon’s anti-DEI letter “unconstitutionally vague, in violation of the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause.”
In AFT’s brief, filed with the aid of Democracy Forward, the union also called the Trump Education Department’s grant-withholding threat “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law.”
Specifically, the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights has the task of enforcing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but Trump’s OCR appears to have turned that goal on its head, AFT’s brief had said. Title VI of that law “does not forbid the activities”—teaching diversity, equity, and inclusion—“described in the letter” from the Education Department to the schools.
Though the Trump administration lost this DEI case, it would seem it hasn’t given up its anti-DEI crusade. On January 14, the Civil Rights Division announced it’s suing Minnesota over what DOJ says is a government-wide affirmative action program. Trump’s Justice Department previously pivoted to defending the rights of white men, with an unstated emphasis on defending the rights of white “Christian” men.
DOJ said it’s “challenging Minnesota’s requirement that all state agencies implement sex- and race-based affirmative action plans and consider ‘affirmative action goals on all staffing and personnel decisions.’ The state’s affirmative action program directs agencies to engage in employment practices that ‘balance’ the sex and race composition of its workforce with the civilian labor force.”
“Making hiring decisions based on immutable characteristics like race and sex is simple discrimination, and the Trump administration has no tolerance for such DEI policies,” said Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi.
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