AT A GLANCE
- The Trump administration is changing how federal civil rights laws are enforced in schools.
- Programs designed to support Black students and students of color are being challenged as discriminatory.
- Chicago Public Schools lost more than $20 million after refusing to end its Black Student Success Program.
- Los Angeles Unified School District is also facing scrutiny over programs created to address racial achievement gaps.
Trump Education Department Pulls Back From Civil Rights Protections and Enforcement In Schools For Black Students
For generations, the federal government enforced civil rights laws with a focus on addressing historic and systemic discrimination against Black people and other communities of color.
The Justice Department pressed schools to desegregate. The Education Department worked to promote equal opportunity and held schools accountable for racial bias.
Under the Trump administration, efforts to address long standing inequities for students of color are now being framed as discrimination against white students.
Programs that have long withstood legal scrutiny are now being labeled “illegal DEI” by the White House. Schools that do not comply have faced threats to their funding, and in some cases, have lost federal grants.
Civil rights attorneys say the administration’s approach represents a major reversal in the purpose of civil rights law.
“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.”
Federal Government Targets Programs Addressing Racial Inequity
The U.S. government has opened investigations or joined litigation over a wide range of efforts meant to address racial inequality in schools.
The Justice Department is investigating programs in Rhode Island and Iowa that were designed to increase the number of teachers of color. Federal grants to districts have also been discontinued when programs mentioned diversity in recruiting teachers or school mental health workers.
In a statement, the Education Department said programs receiving federal funding must comply with 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.
Chicago And Los Angeles Programs Face Federal Pressure
The Trump administration investigated Chicago Public Schools and withheld more than $20 million after the district refused to end its Black Student Success Program.
The program was designed to increase access to advanced coursework for Black students and reduce overly harsh discipline.
A similar program in Los Angeles is also under federal pressure.
Los Angeles Unified School District created the Black Student Achievement Plan after student activism following the 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The plan supports schools with additional teachers, counselors and curriculum in Black history.
At first, the district selected schools partly based on Black student enrollment. In 2023, Defending Education, a conservative group based in Virginia, filed a complaint with the Education Department, alleging discrimination against non Black students.
The district later said it would no longer consider Black enrollment and would instead focus on factors such as absenteeism and test scores. District leaders also emphasized that all students could participate.
After those changes, the Education Department said in 2024 that it saw no evidence of a violation. But when Defending Education filed the complaint again this year, the department’s Office for Civil Rights opened a new investigation.
Students Say The Support Matters
Sarah Parshall Perry, senior legal fellow at Defending Education, said the group 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 helped her throughout high school. A counselor connected her with college preparation programs, which made it possible for her to visit the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford. She said psychologists and social workers also helped her deal with 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 reported signs of progress. 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 the Black Student Achievement Plan.
Advocates Warn Equity Efforts Could Be Slowed
Organizers say federal pressure could slow efforts to address long standing 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 the Black Student Achievement Plan. “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 federal government’s shift has taken other forms as well. The Justice Department has released school districts from court ordered desegregation plans that date back to the Civil Rights Movement, calling them outdated and burdensome.
The Education Department has also stripped funding from some districts that used federal dollars to create magnet schools intended to be more diverse.
In Los Angeles, the Justice Department has also moved to end a separate racial equity effort connected to the district’s history of segregated schools.
In the 1970s, courts ordered LAUSD to address the harms caused by segregation. That case led to a brief period of busing and longer lasting programs, including magnet schools and a special designation for “Predominantly Hispanic, Black, Asian or Other Non Anglo” schools.
The program, known as PHBAO, offers smaller class sizes and additional parent teacher conferences when 70 percent of the students zoned for a school are students of color.
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.
Mark Rosenbaum, an attorney who previously represented children of color in Los Angeles’ desegregation case, said decades of inequity show that argument is not true.
“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.”
