Teachers union sues over Trump administration's deadline to end school
diversity programs
 [February 26, 2025]
By COLLIN BINKLEY
WASHINGTON (AP) — A new federal lawsuit in Maryland is challenging a
Trump administration memo giving the nation’s schools and universities
two weeks to eliminate “race-based” practices of any kind or risk losing
their federal money.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday by the American Federation of Teachers union
and the American Sociological Association, says the Education
Department’s Feb. 14 memo violates the First and Fifth Amendments.
Forcing schools to teach only the views supported by the federal
government amounts to a violation of free speech, the organizations say,
and the directive is so vague that schools don’t know what practices
cross the line.
“This letter radically upends and re-writes otherwise well-established
jurisprudence,” the lawsuit said. “No federal law prevents teaching
about race and race-related topics, and the Supreme Court has not banned
efforts to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in education.”
The memo, formally known as a Dear Colleague Letter, orders schools and
universities to stop any practice that treats people differently because
of their race, giving a deadline of this Friday. As a justification, it
cites a Supreme Court decision banning the use of race in college
admissions, saying the ruling applies more broadly to all federally
funded education.
President Donald Trump's administration is aiming to end what the memo
described as widespread discrimination in education, often against white
and Asian American students.
At stake is a sweeping expansion of the Supreme Court ruling, which
focused on college admissions policies that considered race as a factor
when admitting students. In the Feb. 14 memo, the Education Department
said it interprets the ruling to apply to admissions, hiring, financial
aid, graduation ceremonies and “all other aspects of student, academic
and campus life.”
The lawsuit says the Education Department is applying the Supreme Court
decision too broadly and overstepping the agency’s authority. It takes
issue with a line in the memo condemning teaching about “systemic and
structural racism.”
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Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers,
speaks during the Democratic National Convention Aug. 22, 2024, in
Chicago. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
“It is not clear how a school could teach a fulsome U.S. History
course without teaching about slavery, the Missouri Compromise, the
Emancipation Proclamation, the forced relocation of Native American
tribes” and other lessons that might run afoul of the letter, the
lawsuit said.
The department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the memo, Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil
rights, had said schools' and colleges diversity, equity and
inclusion efforts have been “smuggling racial stereotypes and
explicit race-consciousness into everyday training, programming, and
discipline.
"But under any banner, discrimination on the basis of race, color,
or national origin is, has been, and will continue to be illegal,"
Trainor wrote in the memo.
The lawsuit argues the Dear Colleague Letter is so broad that it
appears to forbid voluntary student groups based on race or
background, including Black student unions or Irish-American
heritage groups. The memo also appears to ban college admissions
practices that weren’t outlawed in the Supreme Court decision,
including recruiting efforts to attract students of all races, the
lawsuit said.
It asks the court to stop the department from enforcing the memo and
strike it down.
The American Federation of Teachers is one of the nation’s largest
teachers unions. The sociological association is a group of about
9,000 college students, scholars and teachers. Both groups say their
members teach lessons and supervise student organizations that could
jeopardize their schools’ federal money under the memo.
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