Three strikes: Courts shut down Trump’s attempt to end DEI in schools

Three federal judges issued rulings Thursday blocking the administration’s effort to shut down diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in schools, delivering a significant blow to one of President Trump’s top campaign issues.

Two of the judges were Trump appointees, and one was an Obama appointee. They reached their rulings for different reasons, but the result was essentially the same: The Education Department botched its attempt to pressure schools to stop teaching woke lessons. At issue was the department’s “Dear Colleague” letter in February telling schools to stop offering instructions that pit races against one another, elevate one over another or heap guilt on some races.

The rulings in the three cases on the same day suggest that the president and his team acted too hastily.

Judge Landya McCafferty, an Obama appointee to the court in New Hampshire, led the way with a preliminary injunction saying the administration trampled teachers’ free speech rights, ignored proper procedures for issuing a new policy and couldn’t even agree on what DEI meant.

The Trump administration had argued that it intended to stop illegal discrimination in schools.

Judge McCafferty said the policy went well beyond that goal.

“By its own admission, it seeks to ‘End DEI,’” she said. That created a situation in which department officials would “be free” to pursue their personal “predilections” as they sought to carry out the Dear Colleague mandate, she said.

“DEI as a concept is broad: one can imagine a wide range of viewpoints on what the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion mean when describing a program or practice,” the judge wrote.

Hours later, Judge Stephanie Gallagher issued a similar blockade in a case in U.S. District Court in Maryland.

Judge Gallagher, a Trump appointee, said the administration’s policy significantly changed the interpretation of the law, so it must undergo the full regulatory process.

“This case, especially, underscores why following the proper procedures, even when it is burdensome, is so important,” she ruled.

Also ruling against the administration was Judge Dabney Friedrich, who sits in the District of Columbia.

She said the new policy was too vague for schools to have a good sense of how to comply with it.

“The court finds that threatening penalties under those legal provisions, without sufficiently defining the conduct that might trigger liability, violates the Fifth Amendment’s prohibition on vagueness,” she ruled.

While a written ruling was still to come, her decision blocked the Education Department’s attempt to impose a certification requirement that asked schools to affirm that they had ditched any woke instruction. 

That case was led by the NAACP, whose president, Derrick Johnson, called the Trump policy “cruel” to “Black and brown” students.

Judge McCafferty’s ruling was the most cutting. She said the Trump team’s approach would silence the teachings of essential topics in classrooms.

She pointed to language in the Dear Colleague letter that said DEI programs were illegal discrimination if they taught that “certain racial groups bear unique moral burdens” or that the U.S. is built on “systemic and structural racism.”

Judge McCafferty said that could mean barring history lessons about the economics of slave states in the antebellum period. She cited evidence that one New Hampshire middle school teacher fears teaching the details of the Civil War, Reconstruction, the founding of the Ku Klux Klan and the Tulsa Race Massacre.

Another New Hampshire high school teacher has questioned whether he can teach a unit on “Heart of Darkness,” Joseph Conrad’s 1899 book detailing European imperialism, and ask students to relate it to events today.

Trump attorneys argued that the lawsuit was premature because the Education Department hadn’t begun any enforcement.

Government attorneys said the policy results from a 2023 Supreme Court ruling that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits differential treatment based on race.

The National Education Association, its New Hampshire chapter and the Center for Black Educator Development brought the New Hampshire lawsuit, and the American Federation of Teachers led the Maryland lawsuit.

Judge McCafferty said her injunction doesn’t block the Education Department policy outright. It does block enforcement against any institution that employs or contracts with one of the plaintiff group’s members.

Judge Gallagher, though, issued a blockade on the entire Dear Colleague letter.

Trump opponents hailed the rulings as a “victory for students, educators and the fundamental principles of academic freedom.”

“The federal government has no authority to dictate what schools can and cannot teach to serve its own agenda, and this ruling is an important step in reaffirming that,” said Sarah Hinger, deputy director of the Racial Justice Program at the American Civil Liberties Union.