Photo by Quinn Dombrowski. CC BY-SA 2.0.
In April, the U.S. Department of Education issued a memo instructing K–12 schools to certify compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (SFFA). This case determined that race-based affirmative action in college admissions is unconstitutional. The DoE memo more than implied that DEI programs are likely in conflict with these legal standards, and schools who continue diversity, equity, and inclusion programs would face loss of federal funding for non-compliance.
Some states like New York openly challenged this directive. Daniel Morton-Bentley, Deputy Commissioner for Legal Affairs at New York’s education agency, argued that DEI principles are not prohibited by law and criticized the Trump Administration’s supposed lack of clarity on what constitutes a violation. Other states and cities have also pushed back. Chicago’s Mayor Brandon Johnson threatened legal action if federal funds are withdrawn, and Maine sued the federal government over funding freezes linked to Title IX compliance disputes.
Many colleges and universities simply rebranded or restructured their DEI offices in response to this federal pressure. For instance, Case Western Reserve University announced the closure of its Office for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusive Engagement, replacing it with the Office for Campus Enrichment and Engagement – basically the same staff now functions under a different name. Corporate America has also tried this type of shenanigan to avoid the ire of consumers unhappy with wokeism in the board room.
The bottom line is that despite the Supreme Court’s SFFA decision and the Trump Administration’s federal efforts to curtail DEI initiatives, many educational institutions and state governments remain committed to these programs. While K-12 schools try to circumvent anti-discrimination law and ED mandates, or higher education quietly hides DEI practices behind closed doors—it is a stark reminder that the DEI beast is hard to kill. It unfortunately needs a wooden stake to the heart, or at the very least to be litigated and legislated back into the deep dark depths of fringe Marxism where it came from.
This post originally appeared at https://phyllisschlafly.com/family/lgbt/dei-isnt-dead/
Phyllis Schlafly