The School Superintendents Association ( AASA ), which represents the leaders of school districts across the country, told its members to ignore the Trump administration’s memorandum telling schools to end their diversity, equity, and inclusion ( DEI ) programs or risk losing federal funding.
AASA advised its members to reject the instructions in a Monday site article, citing a “long-drawn out operation for rescinding financing for failure to comply with civil rights laws” and citing authorities to prevent the Trump administration’s changes.
Superintendents of schools are now governing school districts whose policies and practices immediately violate the 1964 Civil Rights Act, according to Erika Sanzi, director of outreach at Parents Defending Education, which seems foolish for the professional association to request its members to proceed flouting long-standing national law.” Many of them aren’t informed of what has happened on their watch,” Sanzi said. ” They are playing with fire with this terrible advice” . ,
The Office for Civil Rights ( OCR ) issued the guidance last week in a “dear colleague” letter, outlining how school districts could lose federal funding if their students are racialized and use the racialized system the left has been enforcing for years.
The Department will stop tolerating the flagrant and covert racial discrimination that has become a common practice in this country’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 states. Simply put, educational institutions are unable to divide or segregate students based on race, nor to distribute benefits or burdens based on race.
The letter warned districts that “relying on non-racial information as a proxy for race, and making decisions based on that information, violates the law” and warned against school districts who attempted to conceal their DEI policies behind other names or obscure them in other ways to bypass federal oversight.
OCR claimed that programs that” stigmatize students who belong to particular racial groups based on crude racial stereotypes” and “deny students the ability to participate fully in the life of a school” would be violative of civil rights law.
AASA even attempted to undermine the guidance in an attempt to undermine the administration by suing the administration for its “willingness to enforce it.” The organization claimed that OCR’s letter is” not very convincing” because its recommendations “do not have the force and effect of law.” AASA then cited an OCR investigation freeze, which it did not mention was for those investigations that had been started under outdated race and gender theory guidelines set by the Biden administration.
New investigations, based on new standards that are grounded in reality, have started under the Trump administration.
AASA education civil rights attorney Jackie Wernz noted that branding is essential for school districts to avoid losing funding for keeping their race-based policies. She wrote that” there is no legal merit for the idea that considering diversity goals or race at all is a problem.”
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., also egged AASA on, glomming on to a left-wing bait-and-switch tactic that attempts to make the argument that no one knows what conservatives mean by DEI. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., tried to pull the same stunt during Education Secretary-designate Linda McMahon’s confirmation hearing.
” While it’s anyone’s guess what falls under the Trump administration’s definition of ‘ DEI’, there is simply no authority or basis for Trump to impose such a mandate”, she said.
Breccan F. Thies is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered issues of education and culture for Breitbart News and the Washington Examiner. He is a Publius Fellow at the 2022 Claremont Institute and holds a degree from the University of Virginia. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.
