A federal judge voided a Trump administration directive that pressured educational institutions to end all programs related to diversity, equity, and inclusion last month.
The directive, issued by the Department of Education as a “Dear Colleague” letter to public schools in February 2025, stated that school districts who failed to drop “discriminatory” DEI practices could violate civil rights law and lose federal funding. The letter cited the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which ruled that race-based affirmative action programs in college admissions are unconstitutional.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit the following month on behalf of the National Education Association, a labor union of about three million educators, arguing that the Education Department’s policy violated due process and First Amendment protections.
On February 3, the Education Department stepped back from enforcing the directive. But the Trump administration continues to pursue other methods to crack down on DEI through executive orders and civil rights investigations.
This decision hit a personal note for me. I attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill while a federal judge considered a case against it that would ultimately kill affirmative action programs in college admissions across the nation. My first article for Mother Jones investigated the ways Asian-American students fit within debates over affirmative action, where many felt they faced discrimination in the college admissions process. SFFA largely latched onto this argument in their lawsuits against UNC and Harvard, painting a monolithic view of Asian American cultural and political identity. The case was a major step in establishing a signature Trump administration policy meant to erase historical inequities, let alone explore attempts to remediate.
To try to understand how last month’s decision fits within the Education Department’s campaign against what they deem to be dangerous discriminatory DEI, I spoke last week with Sarah Hinger, the deputy director of the ACLU Racial Justice Program. Singer also served as counsel of record for the plaintiffs, who filed the lawsuit against the Education Department with other legal professionals in the ACLU and NEA.
How does the decision on the “Dear Colleague” letter fit within the Trump administration’s efforts to target DEI in schools?
At the end of the first Trump administration, there was an effort to restrict contractors working with the federal government from the ability to talk about equity and diversity along the lines of race [and] gender. Those didn’t really end up coming into effect because of the change in administration, but we saw a series of state legislatures pick these up as concepts and prohibit them from being incorporated across K-12 and higher education.
One of the key problems with these policies were the ways in which they were worded. The laws didn’t just say you can’t talk about race or suggest that affirmative action is a good thing. They tried to get at that through more amorphously-phrased concepts that made it extremely difficult to understand exactly where the line between permissible and prohibited exists. They might apply, for example, to teaching novels or teaching aspects of US history.
The problem that we were faced with is that everyone across the education profession was left in fear to guess at whether or not their program—their livelihood—could come into question by the federal government.
This case [from last month] came on top of those state efforts. In the intervening years, the Department of Education issued guidance in the form of that “Dear Colleague” letter. The Department of Education has issued these over the years to provide some advice to school districts about how to comply with existing civil rights laws.
In this case, they characterized it as a “Dear Colleague” letter, but they did an about-face from prior guidance, which had talked to schools about the ways in which they can create a learning environment that furthers goals of diversity and inclusion.
This letter vaguely said that DEI programs are illegal. [The Trump administration] condemned “illegal DEI,” in which schools were bringing discrimination into their school. But they didn’t define what, in their view, was an illegal DEI program. And so the same issues existed there: It was difficult for any educator or school leader to understand what the administration was claiming was now illegal, particularly when previous guidance had recommended many things that could now be characterized as supporting DEI.
The problem that we were faced with is that everyone across the education profession was left in fear to guess at whether or not their program—their livelihood—could come into question by the federal government. That leads to self-censorship and a chilling effect.
The letter said that schools had two weeks before the administration could potentially hold someone liable. This was followed up very shortly by a newly-announced requirement for school districts and schools to certify their compliance with these new directives under not just the penalties of a potential investigation, but also the revocation of federal funding and liability under the False Claims Act.
This was in line with some of what we’ve seen happening with individual institutions of higher education and the use of any and every lever to convince schools that it would be easier to move away from these practices rather than fight.
Does the case against the “Dear Colleague” directive have any effect on how the Trump administration is using other levers like civil rights investigations against school programs and executive orders?
There are a wide range of schools that are struggling with these cases and the fearmongering that comes as a result. It’s not just the most prominent schools and universities, but it’s also community colleges, K-12 public school districts, and people who create curriculum who are in teacher training programs in colleges.
Yeah, I think they do. We saw the Department of Education say, “we will withhold your funding if you don’t do these things.” It’s now clear that the department will have to more clearly spell out what it thinks complies with or doesn’t comply with existing civil rights laws and how—and that requires more analysis. I think that’s an important precedent going forward. It allows us to assess whether or not that analysis is consistent with the case law and legal precedent and for the education community to assert the value of their work. It also means if the Education Department suggests that school districts are liable for engaging in programs related to DEI, it would be more susceptible to challenge. It’s harder for them to operate in such a sweeping way where they say, in our view, that everything is illegal.
Many states have their own anti-DEI agendas. Does this ruling have any effect on how challenges to state policies may proceed?
Yes, I think we see that this is impactful for states that follow the federal government’s example. New Hampshire was an early effort to create a state corollary and a state law that would prohibit DEI practices in their schools. The ACLU and ACLU of New Hampshire filed a suit against that law, and it’s similarly been enjoined. The court rulings in federal cases cited that there are now a series of cases finding that these types of prohibitions have constitutional flaws. That provided an important source of support for the challenge at the state level.
Is there anything significant that we should consider in trying to understand the scope of these cases against DEI in education?
There are a wide range of schools that are struggling with these cases and the fearmongering that comes as a result. It’s not just the most prominent schools and universities, but it’s also community colleges, K-12 public school districts, and people who create curriculum who are in teacher training programs in colleges.
We saw specifically in this litigation—because of how far-reaching in scope the policy directive was—the range of people who were seeing it show up in their work and the impacts that it was having on them. So you know, community college professors, students who were training to become teachers themselves were teaching special education in colleges.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
This post has been syndicated from Mother Jones, where it was published under this address.