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Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued a Dear Colleague letter to K-12 school districts with an ultimatum: eliminate DEI programs in two weeks — or risk losing billions in federal funding.
The letter cited the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision overturning affirmative action in college admissions as the Trump administration’s basis for ending race-conscious initiatives at all educational levels.
But Catherine Lhamon, former assistant secretary of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, says the directive is legally baseless.
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“It’s essentially a broadside, not a legal document or guidance for school communities,” Lhamon, who served in the Biden administration, tells Word In Black. “The letter makes up what the Trump administration wishes the law was — it does not state the law as any court has interpreted it to date.”
Now, in a new escalation, the DOE has also launched EndDEI.Ed.Gov, a public portal where parents, students, and teachers can report schools for engaging in what the administration calls “discriminatory race or sex based practices.”
Civil rights advocates warn that this tool is not about enforcing fairness but about silencing schools into submission.
A Legal Reversal — or Just an Empty Threat?
Since its passage in 1964, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination in any school receiving federal funding, helped eliminate discrimination in education. And it’s been a vital tool for the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, allowing it to investigate racial disparities in school discipline, special education placements, and access to advanced coursework.
Under the Trump administration, however, the law is being reinterpreted to dismantle programs aimed at addressing racial disparities — not to protect students from discrimination.
“They are using Title VI and the U.S. Constitution as a sword, not a shield,” Lhamon says. “That was not the framers’ intent in the Constitution, and it’s not what Congress intended when it passed this statute.”
Despite the directive, Lhamon urges schools to stand firm.
“My hope is that schools continue to comply with the law as Congress wrote it and as courts have interpreted it, and ignore the nonsense in this letter,” she says. Still, she acknowledges that the threats are not entirely empty.
“The department is signaling its intent to investigate and enforce the law as it has described in this letter,” she says. “So while I understand the fear, the reality is that schools’ obligation is to comply with the actual law — not the Department of Education’s misinterpretation of it.”
Schools Juggle Fear and Compliance Amid Threats to Dismantle DEI
Since the directive was issued, some schools have already begun dismantling DEI initiatives, removing commitment to equity statements from their websites and scrubbing references to race-conscious programs. Many schools also fear losing access to federal dollars like allocations for Title I, which provides more than $18 billion annually to schools serving predominantly low-income students, 37% of whom are Black.
While a federal judge’s injunction has temporarily halted Trump’s DEI ban, Lhamon worries about the long-term impact of the threats.
RELATED: Title I Funding in Limbo: What’s at Stake for Black Students
“For six decades, we’ve had a congressional guarantee that no student shall experience discrimination in schools,” she says. The Ed Department’s “Dear Colleague” letter, she says, “attempts to sow fear and encourage the discontinuation of perfectly lawful activities. I hope all of us ignore that and continue to do right by our kids.”
Waiting to See What Comes Next
Legal challenges to the directive are already piling up. Last night, the American Federation of Teachers and the American Sociological Association filed a lawsuit challenging the directive’s legality. Civil rights groups, including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, have also signaled plans to fight the order in court.
Lhamon says the most important thing for schools to do is to stay the course and not dismantle equity-focused programs out of fear.
“School communities need to recognize their job is to ensure that every child, every day, has equal opportunity in school,” she says. “That has not changed. Don’t be swayed from that task because it is the most important thing we can do for our kids.”
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