The Education Department Issued An Ultimatum About DEI & 19 States Are Suing

The Trump administration has taken a staunch and unwavering stance on the United States Department of Education: it shouldn’t exist. Secretary Linda McMahon has been clear that she sees her tenure as leader of the institution as overseeing its’ “final mission” before ultimately disbanding the Education Department (ED) and relegating its remaining responsibilities to other federal agencies. On April 3, ED issued an agency action taking aim at another of the administration’s ideological targets: diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). State leaders were given 10 days — until April 24 — to verify the elimination of any DEI programs in public schools, without defining what constitutes “DEI,” under threat of losing federal funding. With the deadline passed, 19 states, including three that went to Trump in the 2024 election, have refused to comply with the order, and have filed a federal lawsuit challenging what they claim is an illegal threat to federal funding.

The April 3 Agency Action cites SFFA v. Harvard — a Supreme Court case pertaining to universities’ affirmative action admissions policies and not K-12 education — as the basis for their interpretation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits race-based discrimination.

“Federal financial assistance is a privilege, not a right,” said Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights, in a statement. “When state education commissioners accept federal funds, they agree to abide by federal anti-discrimination requirements. Unfortunately, we have seen too many schools flout or outright violate these obligations, including by using DEI programs to discriminate against one group of Americans to favor another based on identity characteristics.”

Indeed, schools that receive federal funds must adhere to Title VI, but not the interpretation outlined by the administration in its agency action, which plaintiffs categorize as “vague, confusing, and incorrect.” Attorneys general — representing California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin — argue that implementation of any funding cuts on this basis would be “unlawful and unconstitutional.”

“Plaintiffs are left with an impossible choice: either certify compliance with an ambiguous and unconstitutional federal directive — threatening to chill polices, programs and speech – or risk losing indispensable funds that serve their most vulnerable student population,” the suit reads, and continues. “Defendants have no authority under Title VI or any other statutes to use federal funding to coerce Plaintiffs into abandoning diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, curriculum, and instruction that are lawful under current law.”

The suit does not seek to overturn Title VI, but rather to declare the April 3 agency action as unlawful and null and void.

“There is just no question that Connecticut schools have and will continue to comply with federal civil rights laws,” said Connecticut Attorney General William Tong in a statement. “From the start, this has been about Trump and Linda McMahon trying to force their MAGA ideology on Connecticut students and teachers by unlawfully withholding our taxpayer dollars. This is illegal and deeply destructive.”

While the amount of federal funding as part of schools’ total budgets is variable, most school funding is generated at the local level through property taxes, with just 8% on average coming from the federal government on average, per ED stats. But according to the Pew Research Center, some states and districts rely more heavily on federal dollars; a lack of federal funding in Detroit, for example, would cut the district’s education budget nearly in half.

As of press time, Secretary McMahon has not released a statement regarding the states that have not signed the agency action or this latest lawsuit.