Public schools face deadline to remove DEI policies or lose federal funding

The Department of Education is warning state education agencies they may lose federal funding if they do not remove DEI policies and programs to comply with the department’s interpretation of federal law.

A letter from the Department of Education Office for Civil Rights was sent to the departments of education in all 50 states, according to the Department of Government Efficiency.

“Institutions that fail to comply with federal civil rights law may, consistent with applicable law, face potential loss of federal funding,” acting assistant secretary for civil rights Craig Trainor writes in the letter. The message warns the “the department will vigorously enforce the law” to schools and state educational agencies receiving funding and that it will start taking measures “to assess compliance” in no more than 14 days.

The letter argues that a Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which found that affirmative action in the university’s admission process violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, should apply more broadly.

“The law is clear: treating students differently on the basis of race to achieve nebulous goals such as diversity, racial balancing, social justice, or equity is illegal under controlling Supreme Court precedent,” the letter states.

The office advises education departments to “ensure that their policies and actions comply with existing civil rights law,” “cease all efforts to circumvent prohibitions on the use of race by relying on proxies or other indirect means to accomplish such ends” and “cease all reliance on third-party contractors, clearinghouses, or aggregators that are being used by institutions in an effort to circumvent prohibited uses of race.”

RELATED STORY | DOGE cuts target Department of Education research

The letter follows executive orders from President Trump that directed agencies to provide a plan to eliminate federal funding for “illegal and discriminatory treatment and indoctrination in K-12 schools, including based on gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology” and that sought to end DEI programs in federal agencies.

The Department of Education previously announced it removed DEI mentions from documents and webpages, placed employees that led DEI initiatives on leave and dissolved its Diversity & Inclusion Council.

The same day the letter was sent, the Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk, shared on X that the Department of Education had ended 70 DEI training grants, as the administration through DOGE has sought to eliminate what it considers wasteful spending in government agencies.