The American Federation of Lecturers sued the Trump administration Tuesday over its warning to varsities that they could lose federal funding in the event that they stick with variety, fairness and inclusion (DEI) packages.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court docket in Baltimore, alleges the Training Division’s Feb. 14 “Dear Colleague” letter is unconstitutionally imprecise and runs afoul of the First Modification’s free speech protections.
“That racial discrimination was written into the laws of the United States is a historical fact that cannot be erased by a Dear Colleague Letter,” the criticism states. “Black Americans were enslaved by law, laws prevented Black Americans from owning property, attending public schools, and voting. This is, by definition, a legal structure that imposes differences based on race.”
“It is therefore not possible to teach bare factual information about history without acknowledging structural racism—but doing so would now seem to constitute illegal discrimination in the eyes of the Department of Education,” it continued.
An Training Division spokesperson mentioned the division doesn’t touch upon pending litigation.
The lecturers union filed Tuesday’s lawsuit alongside its Maryland arm and the American Sociological Affiliation. They’re represented by the Democracy Ahead Basis, a left-leaning group that’s backing greater than a dozen lawsuits towards the brand new administration.
The case was randomly assigned to U.S. District Decide Stephanie Gallagher, a Trump appointee.
The Training Division’s scrutiny comes because the Trump administration seems to be to broadly finish the federal authorities’s assist for variety packages, leaving DEI leaders scrambling to reply and spurring a wave of litigation. Final week, a choose indefinitely blocked elements of Trump’s government orders that sought to terminate DEI-related contracts throughout the manager department.
The Feb. 14 letter warned the administration would start assessing Ok-12 faculties’ and schools’ compliance in two weeks, pointing to the Supreme Court docket’s resolution putting down affirmative motion in school admissions, College students for Truthful Admissions v. Harvard, as authorized justification.
“Although SFFA addressed admissions decisions, the Supreme Court’s holding applies more broadly. At its core, the test is simple: If an educational institution treats a person of one race differently than it treats another person because of that person’s race, the educational institution violates the law,” the letter mentioned.
However the brand new lawsuit claims the administration is misrepresenting the excessive court docket’s ruling in its quest to crack down on DEI.
“This Letter is an unlawful attempt by the Department to impose this administration’s particular views of how schools should operate as if it were the law. But it is not,” the lawsuit states.
“Title VI’s requirements have not changed, nor has the meaning of the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision, despite the Department’s views on the matter,” it continued.
