For generations, the federal government enforced civil rights laws with an eye toward remedying historic, systemic discrimination against Black people and other people of color. The Justice Department pressed schools to desegregate. The Education Department worked to promote equal opportunity and held schools accountable for racial bias.
But under the Trump administration, efforts to address deep-rooted inequities for students of color are being cast as discriminatory against white students. Programs that have long withstood legal scrutiny are now quick to be deemed “ illegal DEI ” — diversity, equity and inclusion — by the White House. Schools that do not comply have faced threats to their funding, and in some cases, lost federal grants.
Civil rights attorneys describe the administration’s actions as a complete inversion of legal history.
“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 educational equity issues 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 U.S. government has opened investigations or joined litigation over a wide range of efforts to address racial inequality. The Justice Department is investigating programs to increase the number of teachers of color in Rhode Island and Iowa. And grants to districts to train teachers or recruit school mental health workers have been discontinued for mentions of diversity in recruitment.
In a statement, the Education Department said programs receiving federal funding 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 Trump 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.
Complaints against programs to address inequities find new traction
A similar effort to close racial achievement gaps in Los Angeles is under the same pressure.
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 like 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 launched 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, LAUSD 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, 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.”
LAUSD 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 BSAP.
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 BSAP. “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 Justice Department targets a separate LA program
The pivot in the federal government’s approach to civil rights in schools has taken several forms under President Donald Trump.
The Justice Department has released school districts from court-ordered desegregation plans dating back to the Civil Rights Movement, describing them as outdated and burdensome. And 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 Trump 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 consideration 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 sought 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.
Known as PHBAO, the 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.
“LAUSD’s desegregation program has outlived its usefulness to the point of being unconstitutional,” an assistant U.S. attorney said in a news release.
Decades of inequity show that’s not true, said attorney Mark Rosenbaum, who years ago represented kids 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.”
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