(CN) — The NAACP sued the Trump administration Tuesday over its demands that schools eliminate nearly all race-based considerations, arguing that the stark shift in Civil Rights Act interpretations is unconstitutional.
“The Department of Education, tasked with a responsibility to protect the civil rights of all children, has instead claimed systemic racism doesn’t exist — effectively sanctioning the very discrimination that our civil rights laws were designed to prevent,” said NAACP president and CEO Derrick Johnson in a statement.
“Meanwhile, children of color consistently attend segregated chronically underfunded schools where they receive less educational opportunities and more discipline,” Johnson added. “Denying these truths doesn’t make them disappear — it deepens the harm.”
In its suit filed Tuesday in D.C. federal court, the nation’s oldest civil rights organization takes aim at the Department of Education’s February “Dear Colleague” letter, sent to primary and secondary school officials.
In it, the department asserts that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibits schools and colleges from considering race in admissions, hiring, financial aid and “all other aspects” of campus life. State educational agencies must certify compliance by April 24 or risk a loss of federal funding and litigation.
The new guidelines are sweeping attacks on the acknowledgement of race by educational institutions and are wholly unconstitutional, the NAACP says.
“Every child should have equal access to a quality public education, which ‘is the very foundation of good citizenship,’” the NAACP writes in its suit, referencing the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling.
But in a “startling abdication” of its responsibilities, the organization continues, the Education Department’s new guidelines “advance a misinterpretation of those laws plainly foreclosed by controlling Supreme Court and D.C. Circuit precedent to deny Black children equal opportunities.”
According to the NAACP, the Dear Colleague letter and its supporting documents fail to sufficiently define key terms and standards in violation of the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause. In particular, the organization noted, the letter prohibits “diversity, equity and inclusion” or “DEI” practices and programs without ever defining what falls under the category of DEI.
With unclear definitions of what policies are and aren’t permitted, the NAACP says, educational institutions have been forced to overcompensate in implementing race-consideration rollbacks or risk financial and legal repercussions for unintentional guidelines violations.
“As long as the documents remain in place, their broad and vague terms will continue to deter lawful activities by forcing schools and their students to steer clear of almost anything involving race, preventing them from both celebrating racial diversity and addressing racial inequalities,” said Allison Scharfstein, educational fellow with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
Additionally, the NAACP writes in its suit, the Education Department’s haphazard announcement of changes to Title VI guidelines present a litany of Administrative Procedure Act violations.
For one, the organization claims, the documents’ reliance on “vague and false criteria” and the department’s failure to acknowledge or explain its departure from past guidelines renders its changes arbitrary and capricious.
The NAACP also says that the department’s reinterpretation of Title VI “usurps states’ traditional authority to govern curriculum” in violation of the Tenth Amendment, and unlawfully claims legislative and judicial duties in violation of the separation of powers.
And while a similar lawsuit filed in February by the American Federation of Teachers — the nation’s second-largest teachers union — also claimed similar due process and procedural violations, the NAACP goes further to challenge the Education Department’s guidelines on multiple First Amendment grounds.
For one, the organization notes, the department’s guidelines appear to prohibit educational instructions presented from viewpoints acknowledging the nation’s history of institutional racism and its impacts.
“In doing so, Defendants deny students the right to continue receiving accurate and beneficial curricula simply because those curricula acknowledge the existence of systemic racism and advocate for greater equity,” the NAACP writes in its suit.
Additionally, the NAACP says, the guidelines unlawfully infringe upon Black students’ freedom of association by targeting voluntary race-related affinity groups and housing.
The department’s announcement and planned implementation of these guidelines, the organization says, “has and will continue to irreparably harm NAACP members, including by impacting student groups’ use of campus space, speech and resources.”
The NAACP also names U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and Craig Trainor, Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights of the department, as defendants.
The NAACP seeks to have the Dear Colleague and supplemental documents declared unlawful and unconstitutional, and to enjoin the Education Department from implementing the new Title VI guidelines.
A Department of Education representative could not immediately be reached for comment.