A legal challenge has been filed against a Trump administration directive that gave schools and universities two weeks to eliminate any “race-based” practices or risk losing federal funding.
The lawsuit, brought in Maryland by the American Federation of Teachers union and the American Sociological Association, alleges that the Education Department's memo, issued on February 14, violates the First and Fifth Amendments.
The plaintiffs argue that the memo forces schools to only teach views supported by the federal government, which infringes on free speech.
They also claim the directive is too vague, leaving schools uncertain about which practices would be considered in violation.
The lawsuit states that the memo "radically upends and re-writes otherwise well-established jurisprudence," and that "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, known as a Dear Colleague Letter, instructs schools and universities to cease any practice that differentiates treatment based on race.
It justifies this order by citing a Supreme Court decision that banned the use of race in college admissions, asserting that the ruling extends 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 February 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.”
“It is not clear how a school could teach a fulsome US 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.
