Ivy League colleges aren’t the only campuses under fire over DEI initiatives. Now, Trump’s orders are taking aim at K-12 public schools.
Federal judge blocks Trump from cutting school funding over DEI
A federal judge in New Hampshire has blocked the Trump administration from cutting federal funding from public schools that continue to run diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.
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Chicago school officials felt they needed to address the academic achievement gap between Black students and other kids on their campuses.
So they created the Black Student Success Plan, a program to help those kids thrive.
What they didn’t know was that the program would become the center of a federal investigation and a symbol of rebellion against the Trump administration. Nor did they know that their district could lose federal funding.
Thousands of campuses from at least a dozen states have rejected President Donald Trump’s claim that diversity, equity and inclusion programming violated federal civil rights law, and his directive to schools to eliminate them. They’ve continued to host academic programs that benefit certain disadvantaged groups of students and allow books and curricula about racial and social justice to remain in their classrooms.
U.S Department of Education officials wrote a memo to state officials on April 3 telling them schools must end programs that give advantages to students from one race or group over another. They first directed schools to comply with their order within 10 days, and then gave them an extension to comply by April 24. If they didn’t, they said they risked losing federal dollars for violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans discrimination based on race, color and national origin in federally-funded agencies and programs.
The 10-day mark and the extension has long passed.
The Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights has since launched investigations into several alleged civil rights violations at dozens of universities and colleges, including Harvard University and Yale University.
Now the agency’s focus has shifted to public schools that serve the nation’s younger students. Trump’s Education Department this month announced investigations into DEI programs at Chicago Public Schools and another Illinois school district: Evanston-Skokie School District 65.
Officials in Illinois are part of those from at least 19 states that have pushed back against Trump’s directive and refused to cut programming that encourages diversity, equity and inclusion.
Here’s what we know about the ongoing conflict over DEI between public schools and the Trump administration’s Education Department.
What’s happening in Illinois?
A national grassroots organization that advocates against DEI programs in schools, called Defending Education, complained on Feb. 21 about the Chicago program for Black students to the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights.
Nicole Neily, president and founder of Defending Education, grumbled about how Chicago district leaders “made a conscious decision to allocate finite resources to some students and not others.”
“No student should be denied an educational opportunity because of the color of their skin, yet perversely, that’s exactly what Chicago Public Schools has chosen to do – despite the fact that the district’s own data clearly demonstrates that students of all races are struggling academically,” Neily wrote in a news release about the case.
On April 29, the U.S. Department of Education announced it had launched an investigation into the district and expressed concern that school leaders were giving “additional resources to favored students on the basis of race.”
Craig Trainor, an acting assistant secretary for the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, said the agency “will not allow federal funds, provided for the benefit of all students, to be used in this pernicious and unlawful manner,” in a news release.
Ben Pagani, a spokesperson for Chicago Public Schools, declined to comment on the pending investigation. But he said the Black Student Success Plan is codified in and mandated by Illinois state law and incorporated in the district’s five-year strategic plan.
Another Illinois district is also facing scrutiny.
The conservative national nonprofit organization Southeastern Legal Foundation filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights on behalf of Stacy Deemar, a teacher at Evanston-Skokie School District 65, who alleged the district’s policies and practices violate a federal civil rights law, according to a news release from the Education Department.
The drama teacher complained about training seminars the district held “including one that employed racial stereotypes including concepts such as ‘white talk’ and ‘color commentary’ to describe how those of different races communicate.”
She also said the district was sponsoring affinity groups for “both students and staff that are formally restricted on the basis of race, including one for staff divided between ‘individuals of color’ and those who identify as ‘White,” according to a summary of the complaint.
Hannah Dillow, a spokesperson for Evanston-Skokie School District 65, said in an email to USA TODAY that district officials were told that they were under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education on May 1.
Dillow said that the teacher’s complaint misrepresented the district’s “lawful and important professional learning and student-focused initiatives that are designed to advance the work of ensuring that ALL students have access and opportunity to a robust, high-quality education.”
The district hopes for a “just and expeditious resolution” with the Education Department’s OCR, Dillow said.
Why states rejected Trumps DEI directive
Some states and education groups have decried the anti-DEI in education directive in court.
On April 25, 19 state attorneys general filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Education Department, as well as Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and Trainor, calling the directive issued in the April 3 memo “unlawful and unconstitutional.”
They argued the threat from the Trump administration to pull their funding if they didn’t oblige was “subjective and illegal punishment for not acceding to an agenda to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion of any kind in schools.”
The Education Department and its staff “have acted to unlawfully imperil more than $13.8 billion that are spent to educate our youth,” their suit claims.
Any loss of federal funding for refusing to cut DEI programs could be “catastrophic” for students, the suit adds, because the states rely on federal dollars to fund schools and won’t have a replacement for the money if that’s cut.
“For instance, loss of special education funding would devastate schools and districts’ abilities to serve students with disabilities,” the lawsuit reads.
The Education Department did not respond to an inquiry from USA TODAY about the states’ lawsuit.
In the meantime, several states have continued with DEI programming.
New York state officials have said they will not comply with the Trump administration’s directives.
“We understand that the current administration seeks to censor anything it deems ‘diversity, equity & inclusion,’” wrote Daniel Morton-Bentley, counsel and deputy commissioner of the state Department of Education, in a letter to the federal Education Department. “But there are no federal or [New York] State laws prohibiting the principles of DEI.”
That means New York City Public Schools’ mandated Black Studies curriculum program for all students will continue, for example.
Many other states have shared wavering commitment to continuing programs that incorporate diversity, equity and inclusion.
The states that refused to comply could be protected from losing their federal funding – at least for now.
On April 24, a New Hampshire judge and two other federal judges temporarily banned the Trump administration from pulling federal funding from schools that refused to cut diversity, equity and inclusion programming.
On Feb. 14, the Education Department sent a memo to school officials with a directive to “ensure that their policies and actions comply with existing civil rights law.”
The National Education Association and its New Hampshire chapter and the American Civil Liberties Union and its New Hampshire and Massachusetts chapters responded with a lawsuit against the federal department and its head staffers.
The groups argued that the directive was on overstep for the Education Department, vague and a violation of teachers’ rights.
U.S. District Court Judge Landya McCafferty said the Education Department’s directive did not specifically define what kind of program the administration considers to be a DEI program that is in violation of the Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Students bring the debate to court
Some schools in states that have not objected to the Education Department’s anti-DEI directive have removed books that contain information about racial and social justice or cut programs that help LGBTQ+ and other marginalized students, leading one group of kids and parents to file a lawsuit against their schools.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the Department of Defense Education Activity on behalf of 12 children of active duty service members. They said their schools are “quarantining library books and whitewashing curricula in (their) civilian schools” and have “systemically removed books, altered curricula, and canceled events.”
Those include academic materials about slavery, Native American history, LGBTQ+ identities and history, preventing sexual harassment and abuse and portions of AP Psychology curriculum, according to the lawsuit.
Michael O’Day, a spokesperson for the agency that runs schools for children of military personnel, said it does not comment on pending litigation.
Natalie Tolley, a parent of three students in these schools, said her children and their peers “deserve access to books that both mirror their own life experiences and that act as windows that expose them to greater diversity.”
“Learning is a sacred and foundational right that is now being limited for students in DoDEA schools,” she wrote. “The implementation of these EOs, without any due process or parental or professional input, is a violation of our children’s right to access information that prevents them from learning about their own histories, bodies, and identities.
Contact Kayla Jimenez at [email protected]. Follow her on X at @kaylajjimenez.