February 18, 2025
The Department of Education is advising educational institutions to ensure their policies and actions comply with existing civil rights laws in order to maintain federal funding.
The United States Department of Education warns schools to eliminate all diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives (DEI) programs within the next two weeks or lose funding. Ultimately, the letter’s directive officially outlaws scholarships designed to help Black students.
In a four-page letter dated Feb. 14, Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor explained the Department of Education’s interpretation of the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which struck down affirmative action in education and school programming.
As The Daily Pennsylvanian reports, Trainor’s letter to educational institutions explains that the Supreme Court’s ruling that affirmative action policies are unconstitutional did not solely apply to using race in admissions. It also applies to the use of race-based considerations in all aspects. Trainor warned schools, including preschools and elementary, secondary, and postsecondary educational institutions, that they have 14 days to comply with the new requirements to continue to receive federal funding.
Board of Education Gives Schools 14 Days To Eliminate DEI Programs
Trainor advises educational institutions to ensure their policies and actions comply with existing civil rights laws.
“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 states. “Put simply; educational institutions may neither separate nor segregate students based on race nor distribute benefits or burdens based on race.”
The letter from the Department of Education also criticized universities that promote “racial segregation” and other DEI programming at graduation ceremonies. Trainor called them a “shameful echo of a darker period in this country’s history.”
“The Department will no longer tolerate the overt and covert racial discrimination that has become widespread in this Nation’s educational institutions. 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 continues.
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