Nearly a year after the Education Department threatened to withhold billions of dollars in federal funding unless schools and colleges eliminated diversity, equity and inclusion programs — the Trump administration on Wednesday gave up a legal fight against DEI.
In a federal court filing, the U.S. government said it would drop its appeal of a federal court ruling that blocked its campaign against DEI in K-12 schools and higher education institutions — which it alleged discriminated against white students and employees — leaving in place a lower court finding that the effort violated the 1st Amendment and federal procedural rules.
Yet the nearly yearlong federal campaign and funding threats against DEI have prompted widespread overhauls and the elimination of diversity programs throughout the nation’s education systems that education experts said will be difficult to reverse.
For at least dozens of college campuses across the nation, websites have been purged of mentions of DEI or diversity, DEI-related positions have been eliminated or changed, or students have lost access to culturally themed dorms focused on Black, Latino and LGBTQ+ students.
“The damage is done,” said Shaun Harper, a professor of education, public policy and business at USC who is working on a documentary about DEI at universities.
Letter at center of controversy
The dispute centered on federal guidance issued nearly a year ago in last February that told schools they would lose federal money for using “race in decisions pertaining to admissions, hiring, promotion, compensation, financial aid, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies, and all other aspects of student, academic, and campus life.”
The so-called “dear colleague” letter from the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights did not establish a new law, which is the job of Congress. But it indicated how the Trump administration interpreted existing legal precedent, saying a 2023 Supreme Court decision that overturned affirmative action applied to nearly all education efforts to promote racial diversity.
The administration did not give a reason for its decision to drop the appeal. The Department of Education did not reply to a request for comment.
Education expert says ‘damage is done’
Despite the court action, education experts said that the chilling effect of the White House push against diversity has possibly permanently changed campus culture.
“We will see negative outcomes for students, academic outcomes, retention outcomes… because the resources that had long existed on campuses no longer exist in many places,” Harper said.
Within weeks of the Education Department letter’s release last year, USC deleted the website for its universitywide Office of Inclusion and Diversity and merged it into another operation, scrubbed several college and department-level DEI statements, renamed faculty positions and, in one case, removed online references to a scholarship for Black and Indigenous students.
At the University of California and California State University, campuses were more resistant. Officials said they followed Prop. 209, a 1997 law that banned the consideration of race in state college admissions. They said they believed other efforts — such as cultural centers and living-learning dorm floors that appealed to Latino and Black communities but were not exclusive to them — were legal.
Nationally, the picture was more mixed.
The president of Colorado State University said it would remake its race-related programs and avoid a “gamble” in challenging Trump. At the University of Cincinnati, the president said that he had “little choice” but to fall in line. Regents for the University of Alaska voted for DEI to be scrubbed from the system. The University of Iowa said it would end dorm communities for Black, Latino and LGBTQ+ students.
In her court ruling last August that struck down the Education Department’s anti-DEI guidance, Maryland-based U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher wrote that it stifled teachers’ free speech, “causing millions of educators to reasonably fear that their lawful, and even beneficial, speech might cause them or their schools to be punished.”
The judge said the Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action “certainly does not proscribe any particular classroom speech, or relate at all to curricular choices.”
The Trump administration “probably saw the writing on the wall because this is so clearly illegal, though a more narrowly tailored set of rules could likely survive in the courts,” said Morgan Polikoff, a USC education professor. “Still I think they’ve accomplished a lot in the anti-DEI crusade simply by stoking fear about what they might do.”
Little K-12 effect as California schools resisted
The Education Department’s DEI invective did not hit as hard at California’s K-12 schools. The state in April defied a separate Trump administration order to certify that its 1,000 school districts ended all DEI under threat of federal funding cuts.
The Education Department had given states until April 24 to collect certifications from every school district in the nation to confirm that all DEI efforts had been eliminated.
In a letter to school district superintendents, the California Department of Education last year defended its practices, saying that “there is nothing in state or federal law … that outlaws the broad concepts of ‘diversity,’ ‘equity,’ or ‘inclusion.’”
CDE also sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Education about the decision not to comply, saying the federal request was vague.
Gallagher’s August court ruling also struck down the anti-DEI demand made of state K-12 schools.
What comes next
Democracy Forward, a legal advocacy firm representing the plaintiffs, including the American Federation of Teachers, said Wednesday that the drop of the appeal was “a welcome relief and a meaningful win for public education.”
“Today’s dismissal confirms what the data shows: government attorneys are having an increasingly difficult time defending the lawlessness of the president and his Cabinet,” said Skye Perryman, the group’s president and CEO.
Still, while one component of the Trump administration’s stance against DEI appeared to fizzle, the administration has made numerous other efforts and gained some wins in negotiations with individual campuses.
They include an October agreement with the University of Virginia, which said it would eliminate DEI programming. The U.S. government has also faced suits, including one by UC professors, over cancellations of diversity-related research grants.
The Trump administration is investigating UCLA, UC Irvine, UC Berkeley and Stanford, alleging they use race in admissions decisions — charges the schools deny.
The Department of Justice in August sent UCLA a 27-page list of demands for a $1.2-billion fine payment and campus changes to resolve civil rights investigations into the university, including proposals that it eliminate any ties to race-related scholarships. A federal judge last year blocked the terms of the settlement offer.
This month, the Trump administration filed an appeal of the decision to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Times staff writer Howard Blume and Collin Binkley of the Associated Press contributed to this report.
