Teachers Sue Trump Administration for Trying to Weaponize Civil Rights Laws

A coalition of educators and sociologists filed a lawsuit on Tuesday challenging the U.S. Department of Education for threatening to withhold funding from schools that don't comply with the Trump administration's radical revision of long-established federal civil rights law.

The lawsuit, filed in a Maryland federal court by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), AFT Maryland, and the American Sociological Association (ASA), comes in response to a February 14 directive from the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights prohibiting U.S. schools at all levels from "race-based decision making, no matter the form."

This directive followed President Donald Trump's executive order calling diversity, equity, and inclusion "discriminatory" and banning DEI programs and practices across the federal government. Trump subsequently signed another order revoking civil rights protections for people of color and women enacted during the Lyndon B. Johnson administration and yet another targeting what he called "radical indoctrination"—which includes racial justice, LGBTQ+, and other topics—in K-12 education.

Last week, a federal judge in Maryland granted a preliminary injunction blocking portions of Trump's anti-DEI orders on grounds they "likely" violate the First Amendment.

Critics have slammed Trump's DEI ban as a rollback of hard-fought rights for historically marginalized people under false civil rights pretexts.

"This vague and clearly unconstitutional memo is a grave attack on students, our profession, and knowledge itself," AFT president Randi Weingarten said of the February 14 missive in a statement Tuesday.

Weingarten continued:

It would hamper efforts to extend access to education, and dash the promise of equal opportunity for all, a central tenant of the United States since its founding. It would ban meaningful instruction on slavery, the Missouri Compromise, the Emancipation Proclamation, the forced relocation of Native American tribes, the laws of Jim Crow, Brown v. Board of Education, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. It would upend campus life. Federal statute already prohibits any president from telling schools and colleges what to teach. And students have the right to learn without the threat of culture wars waged by extremist politicians hanging over their heads. Our suit exposes these harms and shows how this memo's arbitrary and capricious reasoning flies in the face of both American values and established law.

AFT Maryland president Kenya Campbell said: "Trump's Department of Education is undermining the freedom of every student in Maryland and across the country to learn honest history, stoking more fear and division in the classroom. In a country where there should be no barriers on education, this broad-reaching and unlawful attack threatens the functionality of our public schools."

"We cannot meet the needs of every student, if we cannot teach the diverse and complex history of every student, and that is why AFT Maryland has joined this lawsuit—to ensure the honest education of all who learn in Maryland and across the country, from K-12 schools in our most vulnerable communities to our higher education institutions," Campbell added.

ASA president Adia Harvey Wingfield noted that "sociologists examine society and group behavior, including race and racial inequality."

"Studying and teaching about social movements like the civil rights movement, economic disparities caused by redlining, or immigration policies is impossible without acknowledging the central role of race in these and many other social phenomena," Wingfield argued. "This memo doesn't just hinder sociologists from doing our jobs or merely violate our right to free speech— it inflicts a profound disservice upon students who gain from a more comprehensive understanding of the world and upon society as a whole that benefits from our discoveries about human behavior."