OPINION:
President Trump’s Department of Education, under the strong, business-minded leadership of Education Secretary Linda McMahon, is finally restoring the rule of law to America’s educational institutions.
Ms. McMahon’s attorneys are taking long-overdue steps to end racial preferences in college admissions and dismantle the discriminatory ideology of diversity, equity and inclusion in K-12 schools. These policies are not merely good politics; they are also legal imperatives.
Mr. Trump’s first move — revoking Obama-era guidance that encouraged racial balancing in college admissions — was an essential corrective. His Executive Orders 14148 and 14236 rescind prior administrations’ harmful executive orders. Mr. Trump noted that the prior administration had “embedded deeply unpopular, inflationary, illegal, and radical practices within every agency and office of the Federal Government. The injection of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI) into our institutions has corrupted them by replacing hard work, merit, and equality with a divisive and dangerous preferential hierarchy.”
The Obama-era guidance had no basis in statutory law. It encouraged universities to engage in precisely the kind of racial engineering that the Supreme Court has now declared unconstitutional. In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023), the court held that using race as a factor in admissions violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote, “Our cases have stressed that an individual’s race may never be used against him in the admissions process.”
Admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina had many infirmities that ran afoul of the Constitution. The programs, Mr. Roberts continued, “cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause. Both programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points.” The Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard decision finally swept away decades of judicial evasion that had permitted universities to traffic in stereotypes under the guise of “holistic review.”
With additional executive orders, Mr. Trump has sought to expand educational freedom and opportunities for all families (14191), improve education outcomes (14242), reform the accreditation process (14279) and restore equality of opportunity (14281).
With Executive Order 14173, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” he reiterated his duty to uphold the federal civil rights laws. “These civil-rights protections serve as a bedrock supporting equality of opportunity for all Americans,” he wrote. “As President, I have a solemn duty to ensure that these laws are enforced for the benefit of all Americans.”
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 could not be clearer: “No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in … or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” There is no exception for “diversity.” Race-conscious admissions policies that penalize Asian American applicants, as at Harvard and UNC, constitute classic violations of this command. The Trump Department of Education, through its Office for Civil Rights, is now enforcing this statute as it was written, not as reimagined by campus ideologues.
Indeed, it is not merely permissible for the Office for Civil Rights to investigate elite institutions suspected of discriminating against applicants based on race; it is, rather, a core responsibility distressingly abdicated during the previous administration. The Office for Civil Rights has jurisdiction over all federally funded educational institutions. Where credible allegations arise, as they did in the case of Harvard’s de facto quota system against Asian American students, the agency must act. Anything less would be a dereliction of duty.
Not content to score quick wins in higher education, the Department of Education has also been rooting out nefarious discrimination in K-12 schools. Conditioning federal education funding on the elimination of discriminatory DEI programs in such schools is similarly well in line with the law. Under the spending clause of the Constitution, Congress may attach conditions to federal funding, so long as those conditions are clear, related to the program’s purpose and not coercive. Here, the condition is simple and long-standing: Public funds may not subsidize programs that violate civil rights laws.
DEI programs in schools routinely promote differential treatment based on race. These initiatives, including race-segregated “affinity spaces” and professional development modules that classify students by “privilege” and “oppression,” violate the principle of equal treatment at the heart of Title VI. Rather than promoting inclusion, they are exclusionary. The Trump administration’s policy requires school districts receiving Title I funds, for students from low-income families, to certify that they do not operate such programs. If a district insists on flouting federal civil rights law, it forfeits the privilege of taxpayer support.
Critics, predictably, respond with euphemism and evasion. They claim that DEI fosters “belonging” and “inclusion” but refuse to defend its concrete practices (racial preferences, group stereotyping and ideological coercion). They suggest that Mr. Trump’s policies are novel or punitive. In truth, Mr. Trump’s educational policies are constitutionally routine. The Supreme Court has long upheld the federal government’s ability to condition funds on lawful behavior, especially where Congress has expressly prohibited the type of discrimination DEI often entails.
In both the university and K-12 contexts, the Trump administration’s approach is not radical. It is restorative. It restores the legal meaning of nondiscrimination: treating individuals as individuals, without regard to race. It restores the Department of Education to its proper role of enforcing civil rights laws rather than facilitating political and social indoctrination posing as learning. It also restores public trust in a system that too often confuses left causes celebres with legally permissible activities.
America’s education system has spent the past decade marinating in a racialized worldview antithetical to constitutional principles. The Trump administration is putting things right. In doing so, it is not waging a “culture war.” It is upholding the law.
• Tim Rosenberger is a legal fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
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