WASHINGTON — For decades, federal agencies have enforced civil rights legislation with a focus on correcting historical and systemic discrimination against Black Americans and other minority groups. The Justice Department pushed educational institutions toward integration. The Education Department championed equal access and held schools responsible for racial prejudice.
However, under the current Republican administration, initiatives designed to tackle deep-seated inequalities for minority students are being characterized as discriminatory toward white students. Long-standing programs that previously survived legal challenges are now rapidly labeled as “illegal DEI” — diversity, equity and inclusion — by the White House. Educational institutions that refuse to comply have faced funding threats, with some losing federal grants entirely.
Civil rights attorneys characterize the Republican administration’s approach as a complete reversal of legal precedent.
“It’s literally flipping the purpose of civil rights law on its head, not just harming Black students and students of color, but entire school communities,” said Michael Pillera, director of the Educational Opportunities Project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “It’s unmoored from the actual history of our country and untethered to the reality of life in this country.”
The administration has launched investigations or joined lawsuits targeting various initiatives aimed at addressing racial disparities. The Justice Department is examining programs designed to boost the number of minority educators in Rhode Island and Iowa. Funding for districts to prepare teachers or recruit school mental health professionals has been terminated due to diversity language in recruitment materials.
In a statement, the Education Department said programs receiving federal money must follow the law, which prohibits discrimination based on race.
“Serving student needs and following the law are not irreconcilable mandates. Advocates and educators have no reason to stress if they abide by the law,” said Amelia Joy, a department spokesperson.
The administration investigated Chicago Public Schools and withheld more than $20 million when the district refused to end its Black Student Success Program, which aims to increase access to advanced coursework for Black students and reduce overly harsh discipline.
A similar effort to close racial achievement gaps in Los Angeles is under the same pressure.
The Los Angeles Unified School District created the Black Student Achievement Plan after an outpouring of student activism following the 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. It supports schools with extra teachers, counselors and curriculum in Black history.
Initially, the district chose schools partially based on the number of Black students enrolled. In 2023, Defending Education, a Virginia-based conservative group, filed a complaint to the Education Department, alleging discrimination against non-Black students. The district said it would no longer consider Black enrollment and instead focus solely on metrics such as high absenteeism and low test scores, emphasizing that all students could take part.
After the changes, the Education Department in 2024 said it saw no evidence of a violation. But when Defending Education filed its complaint again this year, the department’s Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation.
Sarah Parshall Perry, senior legal fellow at Defending Education, said it refiled the complaint after district leaders were recorded saying the program had not materially changed, despite the new criteria.
“Our goal is not to make LA Unified a target, but rather to make sure that when people say that they are eliminating racially discriminatory aspects of programs, that they’re actually making good on their word,” Perry said.
In a written statement, the school district said its programs are aligned with state and federal laws and are open to all students.
Makeda Walker-Deen, a junior at Dorsey High School in Los Angeles, said the program has supported her in several ways through high school.
A program counselor directed her toward college preparation programs, which made it possible for her to visit the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford, colleges where she is thinking of applying. Psychologists and social workers she connected with have helped her navigate pressure and anxiety.
“I think that the things a lot of critics are saying are so unreasonable,” she said. “They’re saying that a program that’s meant to help Black students, other students of color, is discriminatory. We’ve been discriminated against in school systems basically our entire lives.”
The district has seen signs of impact. In recent state testing, Black students in the district outperformed the average Black student in California.
“When you provide teachers and school personnel with knowledge and skills to help your lowest performing students, everyone wins,” said Tyrone Howard, an education professor at UCLA who consulted on the initiative.
Organizers worry pressures on the program will slow efforts to address inequities for Black students.
“Where is the uproar about the failings of the public education system for Black children?” said Christian Flagg, director of youth organizing at Community Coalition, which lobbied for the creation of the achievement plan. “We have had this student group at the bottom for so long, these massive gaps for so long. But when we do something to try to address it, there’s a problem.”
The change in the federal government’s approach to civil rights in schools has taken several forms under the current administration.
The Justice Department has released school districts from court-ordered desegregation plans dating to the Civil Rights Movement, describing them as outdated and burdensome. The Education Department has stripped funding from some districts that used it to create magnet schools intended to be more diverse.
In correspondence discouraging districts’ diversity programs, the administration has repeatedly cited a broad interpretation of the Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action, which prevented colleges and universities from directly considering race in admissions.
While that ruling pertained only to admissions, the administration last winter notified schools that any differential treatment based on race was unconstitutional. A federal court struck down that guidance last year, but advocates say schools may still preemptively end equity programs to avoid drawing federal scrutiny.
In Los Angeles, the Justice Department has tried to end another racial equity effort.
In the 1970s, courts ordered the district to address the harms of its segregated schools. The case led to a short-lived period where Black students and white students were bused to different schools. The more lasting programs included the district’s magnet schools, and a special designation for “Predominantly Hispanic, Black, Asian or Other Non-Anglo” schools.
That program offers smaller class sizes and additional parent-teacher conferences when 70% of the students zoned for that school are students of color. The vast majority of district schools qualify.
In January, the conservative 1776 Project Foundation filed a lawsuit challenging the designation, describing it as “a program of overt discrimination against a new minority: White students.” The next month, the Justice Department filed its own complaint and asked to join the lawsuit.
The district’s “desegregation program has outlived its usefulness to the point of being unconstitutional,” a federal prosecutor said in a news release.
Decades of inequity show that is not true, said lawyer Mark Rosenbaum, who years ago represented students of color in L.A.’s desegregation case.
“The opponents of desegregation always said, ‘Drop desegregation, and we will put resources into these schools,’” Rosenbaum said. “You know, we are still waiting for that to happen.”
