Tag: advocates

  • DOJ Report Compounds MSI Advocates’ Worries

    DOJ Report Compounds MSI Advocates’ Worries

    Minority-serving institutions sustained another blow after the U.S. Department of Justice released a December legal report declaring funding to many of these institutions as unconstitutional. That memo could reach further than the Education Department’s move to defund some of these programs, ramping up uncertainty for the institutions.

    Much like the Education Department in September, the DOJ argued these programs are unconstitutional because they require colleges to enroll a certain percentage of students from a particular racial or ethnic background to qualify, among other criteria. ED ultimately redirected hundreds of millions of dollars intended for Hispanic-serving institutions and other MSIs for fiscal year 2025; it remains unclear whether the DOJ memo will result in more of the same.

    But the 48-page document offers new insight into the dangers a wide range of MSI grant programs could be facing and how the administration is legally justifying its stance against the institutions.

    The Trump administration seems to be “doubling down” on its attacks on MSIs, offering some “legal justification for what they’ve already done, and in light of that justification, extending it to some additional programs that they did not pursue in the first go-around,” said John Moder, interim CEO of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities.

    Mandatory Funds at Risk

    Similar to ED, the report by the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel uses an expansive interpretation of the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard that barred considering race in admissions.

    But the DOJ went further and called into question not just discretionary dollars but also congressionally mandated funds to MSIs, said Amanda Fuchs Miller, former deputy assistant secretary for higher education programs in the Biden administration and now president of the higher ed consultancy Seventh Street Strategies. The Education Department left mandatory funds alone in September, acknowledging in a news release that those funds “cannot be reprogrammed on a statutory basis,” but it would continue “to consider the underlying legal issues associated with the mandatory funding mechanism in these programs.”

    The DOJ implied that “they don’t have to give out the mandatory money as required anymore—in their opinion,” Miller said. But as far as she’s concerned, “the executive branch has to enforce statutes,” including discretionary and mandatory funding authorized by Congress.

    “They don’t have the authority to declare a statute unconstitutional,” she added.

    In contrast, the legal memo argued that the president may be able to reject statutes altogether “even if only parts of them are noxious.” And it concluded that “the race-based portions” of various programs—including funds for Hispanic-serving institutions, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian–serving institutions and Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander–serving institutions—are “inseverable,” meaning the unconstitutional parts, according to the DOJ, can’t be removed.

    The DOJ did, however, make some exceptions, including competitive grants to predominantly Black institutions (but not mandatory funds) and the Minority Science and Engineering Improvement Program; the department claimed these programs could be stripped of “race-based provisions.” The memo also scrutinized two TRIO programs, the Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program and Student Support Services, but ultimately considered them constitutional, provided the grants aren’t used “to further racially discriminatory ends.”

    This approach raises questions, Miller said. For example, the Minority Science and Engineering Improvement Program was specifically designed to bolster engineering and science programs at MSIs, so what would it mean to continue the program without MSI status as a factor? She also stressed that Native Americans aren’t a racial category, according to federal law, which the administration has acknowledged in the past. But the DOJ memo seems to muddy the administration’s take on the issue, she said, by arguing that Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian–serving institutions and Native American–Serving nontribal institutions rely on “racial and ethnic classifications rather than political classifications.”

    Ultimately, “Congress needs to stand up and fight back for these schools that play key roles in their districts” and make sure its statutory authority is respected, Miller said.

    Some members of Congress have called out the DOJ and ED for stepping out of bounds. Rep. Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat and ranking member of the House education committee, called the DOJ memo “deeply at odds with the fundamental goal of the [Higher Education Act] to ensure all students, regardless of their background, can access an affordable, quality degree.” Sen. Alex Padilla, chair of the Senate Congressional Hispanic-Serving Institutions Caucus, said the DOJ opinion “ignores federal law.” But lawmakers have yet to share a game plan on if or how they plan to push back.

    Next Steps

    What happens next is unclear.

    Moder said the administration might withhold new funding for the flagged programs, rescind funds already given, or both.

    In that case, institutions could sue, he said, but that’s an expensive ordeal for colleges and universities that, by definition, are underresourced. To qualify for most of the programs targeted by the DOJ, institutions are required to have low per-student expenditures compared to similar institutions, meaning they have relatively few resources to spend on students. They also need to serve at least half low-income students, in addition to a certain percentage of students from a particular racial or ethnic background.

    “It’s an expensive proposition and a time-consuming proposition,” Moder said. Although MSIs could have already sued over their lost discretionary funds, “it’s not surprising that there hasn’t been a flurry of legal challenges presented to date.”

    HACU has been defending HSIs against a legal challenge from the state of Tennessee and the advocacy group Students for Fair Admissions, after ED declined to stand up for the institutions. The lawsuit argued that Tennessee institutions don’t meet the requirement for HSIs—enrolling 25 percent Hispanic students—and miss out on federal funds; therefore, the federal criteria are discriminatory based on race. HACU has since asked the court to dismiss the case, arguing it’s a moot issue now that ED took away the discretionary funds Tennessee protests.

    The hope is “it will leave the possibility of … Congress voting for renewed funding,” and eventually “a new administration to continue to administer it,” Moder said.

    Deborah Santiago, co-founder and CEO of Excelencia in Education, an organization focused on Latino student outcomes, believes the DOJ report could have a positive twist: It offers more insight into how the administration is thinking about MSIs—and more fodder to fight back, she said.

    The DOJ memo “went a little bit deeper on examples, and in doing so, created opportunities to understand where they’re coming from,” and to “challenge some of the basic framing and concepts that are in dispute,” said Santiago, who previously worked as deputy director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics.

    Notably, she said, the report didn’t take issue with the idea that “there is a clear federal policy goal in providing capacity-building for underresourced institutions.” Instead, it took aim at “racial quotas” and quibbled with whether “individual discrimination” against particular students or types of students occurred. But Santiago said it’s easy to argue back that MSI grants support underserved institutions, not individual students, and there’s a difference between racial quotas and enrollment thresholds.

    “MSIs are about institutional capacity-building and not about redressing individual student discrimination. I think that was a false framing that they put out there,” she said. “At the core, this is about persistent structural disadvantages of institutions and how the federal government can fund them.” And when the federal government has limited funds to invest, “you can make the case” that increasing academic quality at institutions with a persistent lack of resources and a disproportionate number of historically underrepresented students “is a clear federal role and responsibility.”

    She also pushed back on the idea that institutions that don’t get the money are discriminated against. By the same logic, “students who are not enrolled in military academies are being discriminated against because they’re not getting access” to investments in military academies, she said.

    She believes that the DOJ memo will help hone how MSIs and their supporters advocate for the institutions to members of Congress and others.

    “I think we need to reframe and make the case to our colleagues on the Hill,” she said.

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  • 5 years after transcript withholding bans began, college students face fewer obstacles but advocates worry about enforcement

    5 years after transcript withholding bans began, college students face fewer obstacles but advocates worry about enforcement

    by Felicia Mello, The Hechinger Report
    December 23, 2025

    OAKLAND — In 2020, California led the nation in outlawing transcript-withholding, a debt collection practice that sometimes kept low-income college students from getting jobs or advanced degrees. Five years later, 24 of the state’s 115 community colleges still said on their websites that students with unpaid balances could lose access to their transcripts, according to a recent UC Merced survey. 

    The communications failure has been misleading, student advocates said, although overall, the state’s students have benefited from the law.  

    It “raises questions about what actual institutional practices are at colleges and the extent to which colleges know the law and are fully compliant with the law,” said Charlie Eaton, a UC Merced sociology professor who led the research team that conducted the survey in October. 

    California community colleges say they are following the law, which prohibits them from refusing to release the grades of a student who owes money to the school — anywhere from a $25 library fine to unpaid tuition. The misinformation on some college websites is a clerical problem that campuses have been asked to update,  the California Community Colleges chancellor’s office said in an emailed statement.   

    Without an official transcript, students can’t prove they’ve earned college credits to admissions offices elsewhere or to potential employers. Millions of students nationwide have lost access to their transcripts because of unpaid fees, according to estimates from the higher education consulting firm Ithaka S+R.  

    Student advocates argued that the practice made little money for colleges, while costing graduates opportunities that could help them pay back their debts. 

    California lawmakers agreed; in 2019, they passed legislation that took effect on Jan. 1 2020, barring colleges from using transcript holds to collect debts. 

    At least 12 other states have followed California’s lead, passing laws limiting or banning colleges from withholding transcripts. 

    A similar but less stringent federal rule approved during the Biden administration took effect last year. 

    The new rules have raised awareness about colleges’ debt collection practices and inspired some to find ways to help their students avoid falling behind on their payments in the first place or to pay off what they owe — including by forgiving their debts.

    Related: Interested in innovations in higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter.

    Transcript withholding was never an especially effective collection tool, researchers have found. One 2018 study estimated that Ohio’s public colleges only netted only $127 for each transcript they withheld.

    Colleges and universities, however, argued that withholding transcripts was one of the few ways they had to prevent students from bouncing among institutions and leaving unpaid bills in their wake. Some use another tactic, blocking them from registering for new courses until bills are paid. 

    When colleges choose to withhold transcripts, the burden falls more heavily on low-income students and students of color, according to the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. Often those students accrue debts when they withdraw partway through a course, leading the college to return part of their financial aid to the federal government and charge the bill to the student. 

    In states with laws limiting transcript withholding, many colleges have begun communicating earlier and more often with students about their debts and offering flexible payment plans, said Elizabeth Looker, a senior program manager at Ithaka S+R. Some have added financial literacy training or required students with unpaid bills to meet with counselors. 

    Eight public colleges and universities in Ohio went further, offering a deal to former students with unpaid balances: Reenroll at any of the eight, and get up to $5,000 of the outstanding debt forgiven. Called the Ohio College Comeback Compact, the program, which began in 2002 and concludes this fall, was open to former students who had at least a 2.0 GPA and had been out of school a year or more.

    The program was designed to give a second chance to students whose educations stalled because of events outside their control, such as losing a job in the middle of the semester, said Steve McKellips, vice president for enrollment management at the University of Akron.

    Since the Ohio College Compact’s inception, 79 students have returned to the university under the program, at a cost to the state of $54,174 in debt forgiven. The university netted five times that, or $271,924, in additional tuition, McKellips said. More than 700 students have used the compact to reenroll, according to Ithaka S+R, which helped coordinate the program and is studying the results.

    “I think sometimes people have this image of somebody walking away from a tuition bill because they just don’t care,” McKellips said. “But sometimes there’s just a boulder in the way and somebody needs to move it. Once the boulder was moved and they could move forward, we’re finding them continuing happily along the way they always intended to.”

    Related: City University of New York reverses its policy on withholding transcripts over unpaid bills 

    Another California bill, introduced this year, would have given students a one-time pass to register for courses, even if they owed a debt. It failed after the University of California, Cal State and many private colleges and universities opposed it. 

    The University of California cited expected cuts to federal and state funding as one reason it opposed the bill. “UC believes that maintaining the ability to hold registration is essential for its ability to reasonably secure unpaid student debt,” UC legislative director Jessica Duong wrote to lawmakers.

    Cal State spokesperson Amy Bentley-Smith said that Cal State wanted a flexible approach to debt collection and that campuses had started eliminating registration holds for minor debts such as parking tickets and lost library books. 

    “Students are able to move forward with their enrollment even with institutional debts in the low hundreds to the low thousands of dollars, depending upon the university,” she said.

    Supporters of the failed bill — which also would have barred colleges from reporting a student’s institutional debt to credit agencies — said curbing aggressive debt collection doesn’t just help low-income students; it speeds up the training of workers in industries crucial to the state’s economy.

    “Schools think about these institutional debts in a way that is very penny-wise and pound-foolish, and it’s preventing people from participating in the economy,” said Mike Pierce, executive director of Protect Borrowers.

    Related: Colleges fight attempts to stop them from withholding transcripts over unpaid bills

    Annette Ayala of Simi Valley, hoping to become a registered nurse,  took her for-profit college to court to force it to comply with California’s debt collection law.  

    She had earned her vocational nursing license from the school, the Professional Medical Careers Institute, and wanted to continue her studies to become a registered nurse. But the college refused to release her transcript —  citing a $7,500 debt that Ayala argued in court records she did not owe — and without the transcript she could not apply to other colleges. 

    In her case, California’s Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education, which regulates for-profit colleges under the state’s Department of Consumer Affairs, cited her former school for violating the state’s transcript-withholding law.

    The college was fined $1,000 and ordered to update its enrollment agreement. The school forgave the debt it said Ayala owed. It’s the only case in which a school has been cited for withholding a transcript since the bureau started monitoring compliance with the law more closely two years ago, said Monica Vargas, a spokesperson for consumer affairs. 

    School officials had been unaware of the California law at the time Ayala sued, the school’s controller, Joshua Taylor, said, and have since updated their catalog to comply with it.

    With her vocational nursing license, Ayala has been working in home health care. Now that she has her transcript, she’s applying for RN programs, and said her salary would roughly double once she has the new degree, allowing her to save for the future and help her son pay for college.

    “You’ve got to give people the chance to get through their program and pay their debts as they’re working,” she said. “You can’t hold them back from being able to make top dollar with their abilities to pay back these loans.”

    Contact editor Lawrie Mifflin at 212-678-4078 or [email protected]

    This story about student debt and transcript withholding was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to ourhigher education podcast.

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  • Free speech advocates rally to support FIRE’s defense of First Amendment protections for drag shows

    Free speech advocates rally to support FIRE’s defense of First Amendment protections for drag shows

    Drag shows are inherently expressive and protected under the First Amendment. That’s what a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held back in August, reversing a district court’s decision that had upheld West Texas A&M University’s campus-wide drag show ban. 

    Yet several weeks later, the Fifth Circuit elected to vacate the panel’s decision and rehear the case en banc, meaning the full Court will consider whether the First Amendment permits government officials to ban a drag show because they disagree with the show’s message. As FIRE fights to preserve the panel’s decision upholding the right of public university students to engage in expressive conduct, a broad coalition of free speech advocates has rallied to file “friend of the court” briefs in support.

    Here’s what happened: West Texas A&M University maintains Legacy Hall as an open forum for students and the public to interact and engage in expression. FIRE’s client in this case is Spectrum WT, a long-recognized student organization that seeks to provide support for and promote acceptance of the LGBTQ+ student body. To that end, Spectrum WT hosts a wide range of campus events, both social and educational, to raise awareness of issues important to LGBTQ+ students and foster a strong sense of community and acceptance.

    The Constitution prohibits University officials from censoring student expression on campus because they happen to disagree with its underlying message.

    Several years ago, Spectrum WT began planning a charity drag performance to be held at Legacy Hall. Proceeds from the event would benefit the Trevor Project, an organization dedicated to suicide prevention in the LGBTQ+ community. 

    But eleven days before the performance’s scheduled date, the university’s President, Walter Wendler, canceled the event. In a lengthy public statement, Wendler announced that “West Texas A&M will not host a drag show on campus,” even while conceding that drag performance is “artistic expression” and that “the law of the land” requires him to let the show go on. According to Wendler, he opposes drag’s underlying “ideology,” believing it “demeans” women and that there is “no such thing” as a “harmless drag show.”

    West Texas A&M President cancels student charity drag show for second time

    West Texas A&M President Wendler enforced his unconstitutional prior restraint by canceling a student-organized charity drag show for the second time.


    Read More

    That’s when FIRE stepped in. Our country’s universities are bastions of free expression, exploration, and self-discovery. They are uniquely places where young adults may have their opinions tested and viewpoints expanded. And the Constitution prohibits university officials from censoring student expression on campus because they happen to disagree with its underlying message. 

    That was what the Fifth Circuit panel held when it heard this case on appeal. Yet several weeks later, the court decided to vacate the panel’s decision and consider the case a second time. So the fight to preserve First Amendment protections for students’ artistic performance, regardless of whether university officials agree with the message, continues.

    Last week, a bipartisan coalition of university professors, prominent legal scholars, and no fewer than thirteen organizations filed five amicus briefs in support of Spectrum WT:

    • The ACLU of Texas and Equality Texas highlight the district court’s doctrinal errors in upholding Wendler’s blanket drag ban, including the court’s failure to recognize the message, history, and context of drag performance and its reliance on a standard for protected expression the Supreme Court has explicitly rejected. As the ACLU of Texas and Equality Texas explain: “The district court’s narrowing of the First Amendment’s protective scope sets an alarming precedent, which, if left uncorrected, could extend beyond the drag performance at issue in this case.”
    • The First Amendment Lawyers Association argues that the lower court’s decision violates the “bedrock First Amendment principle” that government officials may not censor speech merely because they dislike the message. They emphasize how this violation is even more egregious in the university setting, “where speech rights are particularly important.” As FALA describes, Wendler “suppressed protected speech, impoverished public discourse, and denied students and the broader community the right to engage, critique, and learn in a free marketplace of ideas.”
    • The National Coalition Against Censorship, Dramatists Guild of America, Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, Fashion Law Institute, Authors Guild, Woodhull Freedom Foundation, Freedom to Read Foundation, American Booksellers Association, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State emphasize the evidence establishing that Wendler’s blanket prohibition was inherently a viewpoint-based prior restraint that finds no support in First Amendment law. They argue that Wendler’s prohibition is, in fact, “a ‘classic’ example of a prior restraint” that is “unmoored from any objective standards” constraining his censorship authority. As they explain, such prior restraints are unconstitutional as reflected in the “text, history, and tradition of the First Amendment.”
    • The CATO Institute and renowned legal scholars Eugene Volokh and Dale Carpenter describe the applicable legal doctrine to explain why it ultimately does not matter whether Legacy Hall is classified as a limited public forum or nonpublic forum: because Wendler’s viewpoint discrimination is impermissible everywhere. They argue that drag performance is clearly protected expression under the First Amendment and that Wendler violated that protection by censoring drag performance because he disagrees with its message.
    • A coalition of eight professors specializing in LGBTQ+ studies delve into the history of drag performance as artistic expression. They describe how drag has long existed as a medium to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community and defy gender norms and stereotypes. They argue that its message is unmistakable among the general public, and that Wendler’s sole motivation in censoring this artistic expression was his personal disagreement with that message.

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  • Student Voting Advocates Say 2025 Brought “Trepidation”

    Student Voting Advocates Say 2025 Brought “Trepidation”

    Though 2025 featured few major elections, campus voter outreach organizations were still hard at work getting students interested in the electoral process and, in some cases, making them aware of local races. But some student voting advocates said that an increasingly fraught political environment and attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion have made campus outreach especially challenging this year.

    Clarissa Unger, co-founder and executive director of the Students Learn Students Vote Coalition, said in an interview that those challenges were a key theme of the annual National Student Vote Summit, held earlier this month at the University of Maryland.

    As part of the coalition’s goal of engaging 100 percent of student voters, SLSV and its campus partners have historically targeted specific demographic groups to ensure that their voter outreach message extends to all communities. But some organizations, including SLSV, have reported that the closure of campus diversity offices and crackdowns on cultural events and student organizations have made achieving that goal increasingly difficult.

    “If our partners are on campuses that have had restrictions around DEI activities, we’ve been just trying to support them in different ways that allow them to reach all students on their campuses,” said Unger. “In some cases, that might mean switching from working with some specific campus groups to trying to integrate voter registration into class registration processes or things like that.”

    These new challenges didn’t come out of nowhere. In some states, DEI offices, which sometimes partner with voter outreach organizations, have been under attack for multiple years now. Beyond that, some states have passed restrictive voting laws in recent years that could negatively impact college students; they include legislation that limits where and when individuals can vote, adds new identification requirements, restricts voter registration organizations, and more.

    The Trump administration added yet another roadblock for student voter outreach this summer when it announced, just weeks before the fall semester began for most institutions, that work-study funds could not be put toward jobs involving “partisan or nonpartisan voter registration, voter assistance at a polling place or through a voter hotline, or serving as a poll worker.” The move disrupted civic engagement offices on numerous campuses that rely on work-study students.

    These changes concern student voting advocates, who argue not only that it’s important for every citizen to exercise their right to vote, but also that voting in college is vital because it helps get students in the habit of voting for the rest of their lives.

    Wariness of Civic Engagement

    Sudhanshu Kaushik, executive director of the North American Association of Indian Students, has advocated for “cultural microtargeting” as a strategy for voter engagement, which he defined in a blog post as “the use of knowledge of cultural identities and culture-specific values, traditions, references, and language to tailor public messaging and boost civic engagement.” In the run-up to the 2024 election, that included tabling at a Diwali celebration and providing voting information in seven different languages.

    This year, though, he said this work was significantly more difficult because leaders of affinity groups are nervous about hosting cultural events, often out of fear that their institutions may face backlash from lawmakers and lose funding.

    “All identity-focused groups have been really, really wary about what they can and can’t be celebrating. ‘Can I celebrate Diwali? Can I celebrate Holi?’” he said. “I don’t think state governments or the federal government is out to stop Diwali celebrations; that’s not at all what the intent is. But I think when you’re a student, when you’re in a club, and you’re doing this—a lot of these people are careful in terms of what the impact might be.”

    That chilling effect is being felt by LGBTQ+ students as well, according to Isaac James, founder of the LGBTQ+ youth voter outreach organization OutVote. OutVote worked to mobilize LGBTQ+ voters in both Virginia and New Jersey during their recent gubernatorial elections.

    “There were multiple different communities … who expressed concern, fear and trepidation around engaging in the democratic process because of the anti-LGBTQ rhetoric that is being passed down through the federal government and state governments across the country,” he said. He cited anti-transgender advertisements from candidates in both states that “contributed to a culture of fear around the civic activity of young LGBTQ voters who felt directly targeted by that rhetoric, specifically young trans voters.”

    Naomi Barbour, vice chair and LGBTQIA+ representative for the student advisory board of the Campus Vote Project, the student voting arm of the voting rights nonprofit the Fair Elections Center, also noted that voter ID laws can negatively impact trans student voters, who might feel uneasy presenting an ID that lists a gender that doesn’t reflect how they identify.

    Some international students, alarmed by the Trump administration’s attacks on them, have also become wary of interacting with student voter outreach organizations, noted Kaushik, who presented on cultural microtargeting at the student voting summit. Historically, voter outreach organizations have tried to include those who can’t vote in their work in other ways, such as teaching them about the political processes in the U.S. or inviting them to do outreach work themselves.

    Alicia Vallette, the chair of the student advisory board for the Campus Vote Project, said that she sees that fear not as a simple side effect of today’s hostile political environment, but rather as a goal.

    “We’ve heard that students are wary of getting involved in nonpartisan political work and civic engagement work based on the current environment. A lot of this charged rhetoric is designed to foster fear and apprehension and to try to foster disengagement in the system itself,” she said.

    That’s why the Campus Vote Project and other voter outreach organizations now must work harder than ever to ensure students aren’t afraid to vote and engage in politics, she said. At the SLSV conference, Campus Vote Project advisory board members led an exercise to help other student organizers figure out how to reach students who aren’t already civically engaged; the organization is also advocating against the SAVE Act, federal legislation that aims to require proof of citizenship to vote. As the countdown to the 2026 midterms begins, student voting advocates continue to brainstorm ways to “combat apprehension and disengagement on campus,” Vallette said.

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  • Advocates Defend In-State Tuition for Undocumented Students

    Advocates Defend In-State Tuition for Undocumented Students

    Immigrant students and their advocates are working to reopen federal lawsuits that ended in-state tuition benefits for undocumented students in two states and another state where the same outcome seems imminent. Advocates say the judges ruled in favor of the government without a public hearing and the affected students weren’t given the opportunity to defend the policies.

    Since the summer, the U.S. Department of Justice challenged in-state tuition policies in Illinois, Kentucky, Minnesota, Oklahoma and Texas, claiming state laws extending in-state tuition prices to undocumented students breach federal law.

    In Texas and Oklahoma, attorneys general quickly sided with the DOJ and judges swiftly ruled to end in-state tuition benefits for undocumented students. As a result, tuition tripled for some undocumented students this fall, forcing them to make difficult choices about whether they could afford to stay enrolled.

    Kentucky’s undocumented students could soon face the same dilemma. The Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education agreed to end in-state tuition benefits for local undocumented students in a settlement filed in September, but a judge has yet to make a ruling. Meanwhile, legal battles in Minnesota and Illinois are ongoing as these states defend their policies.

    Since these lawsuits first emerged, civil rights groups and students have sought to intervene or become parties to them. They’re hoping to reopen the quickly closed cases to have their say in court.

    A Latino civil rights organization, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, was the first to file a motion to intervene on behalf of undocumented students in Texas in June. A month later, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, the Texas Civil Rights Project, Democracy Forward and the National Immigration Law Center followed suit. They filed their own emergency motions to intervene on behalf of the activist group La Unión del Pueblo Entero, the Austin Community College District’s Board of Trustees and Oscar Silva, a student at the University of North Texas.

    MALDEF filed a similar motion on behalf of a group of undocumented students in Kentucky in August. And last week, the organization moved to intervene for students in Oklahoma, as well.

    Thomas A. Saenz, MALDEF president and general counsel, said undocumented students in Kentucky, Oklahoma and Texas “were promised regular tuition, and as a result of that promise, made the decision to attend public higher education institutions in those states,” but “that promise was stripped away wrongfully” and without public input.

    He stressed that, except for in extreme circumstances, such as cases involving national security, federal courts are meant to do their work in the public eye. But the Texas and Oklahoma laws got the ax without a public hearing. He also argued state lawmakers who dislike these policies can seek to repeal them, like any other state law, but there’s “no basis for legally challenging them.”

    “They’re not allowed to close the public out, do things behind closed doors,” Saenz said. “We ought to expect our courts to conduct their work in public. And that did not happen in Texas. It did not happen in Oklahoma.”

    A Bumpy Road

    Despite students and advocates’ efforts, the motions to intervene have hit a legal setback.

    In Texas, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor denied both MALDEF’s and the other groups’ motions to intervene. O’Connor, a George W. Bush appointee, said in court filings he agreed with the federal government and Texas that the motions were “legally futile” because federal law “pre-empts” the challenged Texas law. All of the groups seeking to intervene appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

    Saenz pushed back on the judge’s reasoning, saying O’Connor agreed with Texas and the DOJ’s conclusion “without any argument” or a public hearing where he could have heard a defense of the Texas Dream Act, the 24-year-old law that offered in-state tuition to undocumented students.

    “No administration of either party in nearly a quarter century has ever challenged the Texas Dream Act, so his conclusion of futility is simply ludicrous,” Saenz said.

    The law was never “presented,” according to Saenz. “That’s the way the courts are supposed to work. You’re supposed to have [an] argument presented in an adversarial manner. He simply signed off on a concocted agreement” between the Texas and U.S. attorneys general, he said.

    A group of higher ed institutions and organizations have rallied behind MALDEF and other advocacy groups. The Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration filed a 43-page amicus brief with the Fifth Circuit last week, defending interveners in Texas. Thirty-seven colleges, universities, higher education and immigrant rights organizations also signed on to the amicus brief, including the American Association of Colleges and Universities and the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities.

    The district court decision “violates democratic principles by denying all interested parties their right to be heard,” the amicus brief read.

    Whether or not intervention efforts succeed, the stakes of these overturned state laws are too high not to try everything possible, said Miriam Feldblum, president and CEO of the Presidents’ Alliance.

    “This is about workforce development and supporting our domestic—including immigrant—talent pipeline that colleges and universities train, educate, nurture, and that go on to fuel the workforces … in communities and states,” she said.

    She also described intervening as a matter of “fairness.”

    “This is not about special treatment of undocumented students,” Feldblum said. “The tuition-equity challenges are targeting students who have grown up in the U.S., who have graduated from local high schools to pursue postsecondary education. This is what we want them to do. This is why we’re investing in their education.”

    Despite the roadblock, Saenz said he’s still confident motions to intervene will ultimately triumph.

    “I’m very hopeful, because it’s the law,” he said. “Intervention is legally required to be granted in all of these cases. And when we get to the merits of whether the tuition-equity laws are pre-empted or not, the law is absolutely on our side.”

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  • Advocates warn of risks to higher ed data if Education Department is shuttered

    Advocates warn of risks to higher ed data if Education Department is shuttered

    by Jill Barshay, The Hechinger Report
    November 10, 2025

    Even with the government shut down, lots of people are thinking about how to reimagine federal education research. Public comments on how to reform the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the Education Department’s research and statistics arm, were due on Oct. 15. A total of 434 suggestions were submitted, but no one can read them because the department isn’t allowed to post them publicly until the government reopens. (We know the number because the comment entry page has an automatic counter.)

    A complex numbers game 

    There’s broad agreement across the political spectrum that federal education statistics are essential. Even many critics of the Department of Education want its data collection efforts to survive — just somewhere else. Some have suggested moving the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to another agency, such as the Commerce Department, where the U.S. Census Bureau is housed.

    But Diane Cheng, vice president of policy at the Institute for Higher Education Policy, a nonprofit organization that advocates for increasing college access and improving graduation rates, warns that shifting NCES risks the quality and usefulness of higher education data. Any move would have to be done carefully, planning for future interagency coordination, she said.

    “Many of the federal data collections combine data from different sources within ED,” Cheng said, referring to the Education Department. “It has worked well to have everyone within the same agency.”

    Related: Our free weekly newsletter alerts you to what research says about schools and classrooms.

    She points to the College Scorecard, the website that lets families compare colleges by cost, student loan debt, graduation rates, and post-college earnings. It merges several data sources, including the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), run by NCES, and the National Student Loan Data System, housed in the Office of Federal Student Aid. Several other higher ed data collections on student aid and students’ pathways through college also merge data collected at the statistical unit with student aid figures. Splitting those across different agencies could make such collaboration far more difficult.

    “If those data are split across multiple federal agencies,” Cheng said, “there would likely be more bureaucratic hurdles required to combine the data.”

    Information sharing across federal agencies is notoriously cumbersome, the very problem that led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security after 9/11.

    Hiring and $4.5 million in fresh research grants

    Even as the Trump administration publicly insists it intends to shutter the Department of Education, it is quietly rebuilding small parts of it behind the scenes.

    In September, the department posted eight new jobs to replace fired staff who oversaw the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the biennial test of American students’ achievement. In November, it advertised four more openings for statisticians inside the Federal Student Aid Office. Still, nothing is expected to be quick or smooth. The government shutdown stalled hiring for the NAEP jobs, and now a new Trump administration directive to form hiring committees by Nov. 17 to approve and fill open positions may further delay these hires.

    At the same time, the demolition continues. Less than two weeks after the Oct. 1 government shutdown, 466 additional Education Department employees were terminated — on top of the roughly 2,000 lost since March 2025 through firings and voluntary departures. (The department employed about 4,000 at the start of the Trump administration.) A federal judge temporarily blocked these latest layoffs on Oct. 15.

    Related: Education Department takes a preliminary step toward revamping its research and statistics arm

    There are also other small new signs of life. On Sept. 30 — just before the shutdown — the department quietly awarded nine new research and development grants totaling $4.5 million. The grants, listed on the department’s website, are part of a new initiative called, “From Seedlings to Scale Grants Program” (S2S), launched by the Biden administration in August 2024 to test whether the Defense Department’s DARPA-style innovation model could work in education. DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, invests in new technologies for national security. Its most celebrated project became the basis for the internet. 

    Each new project, mostly focused on AI-driven personalized learning, received $500,000 to produce early evidence of effectiveness. Recipients include universities, research organizations and ed tech firms. Projects that show promise could be eligible for future funding to scale up with more students.

    According to a person familiar with the program who spoke on background, the nine projects had been selected before President Donald Trump took office, but the formal awards were delayed amid the department’s upheaval. The Institute of Education Sciences — which lost roughly 90 percent of its staff — was one of the hardest hit divisions.

    Granted, $4.5 million is a rounding error compared with IES’s official annual budget of $800 million. Still, these are believed to be the first new federal education research grants of the Trump era and a faint signal that Washington may not be abandoning education innovation altogether.

    Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or [email protected].

    This story about risks to federal education data was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

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  • Parents, advocates alarmed as Trump leverages shutdown to gut special education department

    Parents, advocates alarmed as Trump leverages shutdown to gut special education department

    Two months after Education Secretary Linda McMahon was confirmed, she and a small team from the department met with leadership from the National Center for Learning Disabilities, an advocacy group that works on behalf of millions of students with dyslexia and other disorders. 

    Jacqueline Rodriguez, NCLD’s chief executive officer, recalled pressing McMahon on a question raised during her confirmation hearing: Was the Trump administration planning to move control and oversight of special education law from the Education Department to Health and Human Services?

    Rodriguez was alarmed at the prospect of uprooting the 50-year-old Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA), which spells out the responsibility of schools to provide a “free, appropriate public education” to students with disabilities. Eliminating the Education Department entirely is a primary objective of Project 2025, the conservative blueprint that has guided much of the administration’s education policy. After the department is gone, Project 2025 said oversight of special education should move to HHS, which manages some programs that help adults with disabilities. 

    But the sprawling department that oversees public health has no expertise in the complex education law, Rodriguez told McMahon.

    “Someone might be able to push the button to disseminate funding, but they wouldn’t be able to answer a question from a parent or a school district,” she said in an interview later. 

    For her part, McMahon had wavered during her confirmation hearing on the subject. “I’m not sure that it’s not better served in HHS, but I don’t know,” she told Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who shared concerns from parents worried about who would enforce the law’s provisions.

    But nine days into a government shutdown that has furloughed most federal government workers, the Trump administration announced that it was planning a drastic “reduction in force” that would lay off more than 450 people, including almost everyone who works in the Office of Special Education Programs. Rodriguez believes the layoffs are a way that the administration plans to force the special education law to be managed by some other federal office.

    Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter featuring the most important stories in education. 

    The Education Department press office did not respond to a question about the administration’s plans for special education oversight. Instead, the press office pointed to a social media post from McMahon on Oct. 15. The fact that schools are “operating as normal” during the government shutdown, McMahon wrote on X, “confirms what the President has said: the federal Department of Education is unnecessary.”’

    Yet in that May meeting, Rodriguez said she was told that HHS might not be the right place for IDEA, she recalled. While the new department leadership made no promises, they assured her that any move of the law’s oversight would have to be done with congressional approval, Rodriguez said she was told. 

    The move to gut the office overseeing special education law was shocking to families and those who work with students with disabilities. About 7.5 million children ages 3 to 21 are served under IDEA, and the office had already lost staffers after the Trump administration dismissed nearly half the Education Department’s staff in March, bringing the agency’s total workforce to around 2,200 people. 

    For Rodriguez, whose organization supports students with learning disabilities such as dyslexia, McMahon’s private assurances was the administration “just outright lying to the public about their intentions.”

    “The audacity of this administration to communicate in her confirmation, in her recent testimony to Congress and to a disability rights leader to her face, ‘Don’t worry, we will support kids with disabilities,’” Rodriguez said. “And then to not just turn a 180-degree on that, but to decimate the ability to enforce the law that supports our kids.”

    She added: “It could not just be contradictory. It feels like a bait and switch.”

    Five days after the firings were announced, a U.S. district judge temporarily blocked the administration’s actions, setting up a legal showdown that is likely to end up before the Supreme Court. The high court has sided with the president on most of his efforts to drastically reshape the federal workforce. And President Donald Trump said at a Tuesday press briefing that more cuts to “Democrat programs” are coming.

    “They’re never going to come back in many cases,” he added.

    Related: Hundreds of thousands of students are entitled to training and help finding jobs. They don’t get it

    In her post on X, McMahon also said that “no education funding is impacted by the RIF, including funding for special education,” referring to the layoffs. 

    But special education is more than just money, said Danielle Kovach, a special education teacher in Hopatcong, N.J. Kovach is also a former president of the Council for Exceptional Children, a national organization for special educators.

    “I equate it to, what would happen if we dismantled a control tower at a busy airport?” Kovach said. “It doesn’t fly the plane. It doesn’t tell people where to go. But it ensures that everyone flies smoothly.”

    Katy Neas, a deputy assistant secretary in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services during the Biden administration, said that most people involved in the education system want to do right by children.

    “You can’t do right if you don’t know what the answer is,” said Neas, who is now the chief executive officer of The Arc of the United States, which advocates for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. “You can’t get there if you don’t know how to get your questions answered.”

    Families also rely on IDEA’s mandate that each child with a disability receives a free, appropriate public education — and the protections that they can receive if a school or district does not live up to that requirement.

    Maribel Gardea, a parent in San Antonio, said she fought with her son’s school district for years over accommodations for his disability. Her son Voozeki, 14, has cerebral palsy and is nonverbal. He uses an eye-gaze device that allows him to communicate when he looks at different symbols on a portable screen. The district resisted getting the device for him to use at school until, Gardea said, she reminded them of IDEA’s requirements.

    “That really stood them up,” she said.

    Related: Trump wants to shake up education. What that could mean for a charter school started by a GOP senator’s wife

    Gardea, the co-founder of MindShiftED, an organization that helps parents become better advocates for their children with disabilities, said the upheaval at the Education Department has her wondering what kind of advice she can give families now.

    For example, an upcoming group session will teach parents how to file official grievances to the federal government if they have disputes with their child’s school or district about services. Now, she has to add in an explanation of what the deep federal cuts will mean for parents.

    Voozeki Gardea, who attends school in the San Antonio area, uses an eye-gaze communication device with the assistance of school paraprofessional Vanessa Martinez. The device verbalizes words and phrases when Voozeki looks at different symbols. Credit: Courtesy Maribel Gardea

    “I have to tell you how to do a grievance,” she said she plans to tell parents. “But I have to tell you no one will answer.”

    Maybe grassroots organizations may find themselves trying to track parent complaints on their own, she said, but the prospect is exhausting. “It’s a really gross feeling to know that no one has my back.”

    In addition to the office that oversees special education law, the Rehabilitation Services Administration, which is also housed at the Department of Education and supports employment and training of people with disabilities, was told most of its staff would be fired.

    “Regardless of which office you’re worried about, this is all very intentional,” said Julie Christensen, the executive director of the Association of People Supporting Employment First, which advocates for the full inclusion of people with disabilities in the workforce. “There’s no one who can officially answer questions. It feels like that was kind of the intent, to just create a lot of confusion and chaos.”

    Those staffers “are the voice within the federal government to make sure policies and funding are aligned to help people with disabilities get into work,” Christensen said. Firing them, she added, is counterintuitive to everything the administration says it cares about. 

    For now, advocates say they are bracing for a battle similar to those fought decades ago that led to the enactment of civil rights law protecting children and adults with disabilities. Before the law was passed, there was no federal guarantee that a student with a disability would be allowed to attend public school.  

    “We need to put together our collective voices. It was our collective voices that got us here,” Kovach said.

    And, Rodriguez said, parents of children in special education need to be prepared to be their own watchdogs. “You have to become the compliance monitor.” 

    It’s unfair, she said, but necessary. 

    Contact staff writer Christina Samuels at 212-678-3635 or [email protected].

    This story about special education was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

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  • Advocates Worry About McNair Scholars Program

    Advocates Worry About McNair Scholars Program

    Delays in the distribution of federal grants for undergraduates involved with TRIO, a series of college-access programs, combined with an ongoing lawsuit have raised concerns among proponents for the McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program—a TRIO grant designed specifically for those pursuing graduate school.

    Legally, grants don’t have to be awarded for either the TRIO undergraduate programs or McNair until the end of the fiscal year, Sept. 30. But in most years prior, the Department of Education has notified institutions about the status of awards in late August or mid-September. 

    That has not been the case so far this year. 

    Award notifications started to trickle out after Sept. 15 for the undergraduate programs that started Sept. 1, but according to a TRIO advocacy group, most of the college staff members who lead McNair are still waiting to hear from the department, though at least one program got approval Friday.

    As with the other TRIO programs, the Education Department says it will issue notices by the end of the month. But with a lawsuit filed last year arguing McNair is discriminatory and President Trump calling to slash TRIO altogether in his recent budget proposal, uncertainty remains rampant. 

    “All of a sudden, we’re in sort of this panic mode,” one assistant program director said on condition of anonymity, fearing that speaking out could harm the students she serves. “That stress and panic has certainly been building since January, but this definitely accelerated it.” 

    And while the anonymous director said her program has yet to receive a status update, for some the fear of cancellation has already become a reality. 

    So far, the Council for Opportunity in Education, a TRIO advocacy group, has tallied 18 grant cancellations out of the more than 200 McNair programs. Collectively, McNair serves more than 6,000 first-generation, low-income and underrepresented students each year. 

    ED deputy press secretary Ellen Keast said in a statement, “The department plans to issue continuation awards for the McNair Scholars program by the end of the fiscal year,” while also continuing to “evaluate the underlying legal issues raised in litigation.” In an email obtained by Inside Higher Ed, a legislative affairs officer at the department reinforced this statement to a staffer on Capitol Hill, saying that any grantees facing a cancellation would have been notified by Sept. 16. 

    Still, the director said she is scrambling to devise a backup plan.

    “We have less than three weeks to figure out what’s going on, talk to our institutions and make a plan,” she said. “Jobs are going to be lost and students aren’t going to have services.”

    ‘Unacceptable Delays’

    Worries about McNair have existed for months, but they kicked into a higher gear at a COE conference earlier this month. 

    The program director and COE president Kimberly Jones, both of whom attended the conference, say that Christopher McCaghren, ED’s deputy assistant secretary for higher education programs, spoke about the future of McNair on Sept. 10. And according to both of their recollections, when the secretary was asked if and when grant awards would be allocated, he said the department needed to wait on further rulings from the court before it could administer this year’s awards. (Jones noted that the session was not recorded, at the request of the department.) 

    Keast said the account of McCaghren’s comments was “unsubstantiated fake news” and reinforced that the department is committed to issuing McNair awards by Sept. 30. She declined, however, to provide a transcript or recording of his remarks.

    The lawsuit McCaghren was likely referring to was filed last year by the Young America’s Foundation, a national conservative student group. It alleged the criteria for McNair eligibility was race-based and argued that in order to be constitutional, the program should be open to all students. The case was dismissed by a federal district court, but the plaintiffs have since appealed. 

    If the government is delaying grant allocation because of the lawsuit, Jones said, it would be an “absolutely unacceptable” practice. 

    “If the government couldn’t move on something every time they were sued, then they wouldn’t do anything,” she added. “I believe that this is an opportunity they’re taking advantage of to undermine the program and attempt to eliminate it.”

    Amanda Fuchs Miller, the Biden administration appointee who previously filled McCaghren’s role, made similar comments.

    “Just because there’s pending litigation doesn’t mean that you don’t fund a program that Congress has authorized and appropriated funds for,” she said. “That’s not the role of the executive branch.”

    Both Jones and Fuchs Miller pointed to the department’s recent decision to end funding for grant programs that support minority-serving institutions as another reason they are worried about McNair’s future. 

    The MSI decision stemmed from a similar lawsuit that argued the criteria for Hispanic-serving institutions was illegal. And while no court ruling had been issued, a Justice Department official agreed with the plaintiffs and so did Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who expanded the determination to include similar grant programs.

    ‘Tapping Into Talent’

    Named after Ronald McNair, a first-generation college student and astrophysicist who died during the launch of NASA’s space shuttle Challenger in 1986, the McNair Scholars program started in 1989 and receives about $60 million per year from Congress.

    As with other TRIO programs, at least two-thirds of the students served under McNair must be first-generation and low-income. But what has sparked the legal scrutiny of the graduate program is a provision that allows up to one-third of the participating students to be admitted because they are “a member of a group that is underrepresented.” 

    Proponents for McNair say that this may include characteristics like race or sexuality, but aspects like gender and field of study often play a role as well. In many instances a student will tick all three boxes—first-gen, low-income and underrepresented—at once.

    “There’s a perspective that McNair is only for students of color, which it is not,” said Jones. “It particularly looks for a demographic that is not usually sought after in postgraduate education … We’re tapping into talent that we would not have otherwise.”

    For example, a white woman from a low-income household who is pursuing a career in STEM could be a prime candidate under the current regulatory statute.

    But advocates worry that because of current political tensions, many eligible students of all races could lose access to this critical service.

    The program leader who spoke with Inside Higher Ed said that until grant awards are sent out, her rural institution will lack $278,000. As a result, she will likely have to tell 27 students that the classes they have already signed up for, the workshops they were promised and the conferences they planned to attend will not be possible.

    “This is the semester that our seniors’ grad applications are due, so to just yank the rug out from underneath them and say, ‘You’re on your own’ in this critical time is just cruel,” she said. “It’s also, in my opinion, a really shortsighted way of the administration understanding national security and participating in the global economy.”

    Tara Ruttley, a McNair alumna who studied neuroscience and now works in the space industry, always knew she wanted a Ph.D. but wasn’t sure how to get there before she saw a poster advertising the grant program at Colorado State University. Through McNair she was able to pursue a paid research internship, present her findings at conferences, receive guidance on application essays and then give back to younger students. If funding were to be cut, Ruttley said, other aspiring graduate students won’t be so lucky.

    “I’m kind of a scrapper, so I might have figured it out, but it definitely would have been delayed. The entire package wouldn’t have been as strong and it probably would have taken me a lot longer to get to where I was going,” she explained. “There’s a whole generation of scientists we may never see from varied backgrounds across the country.”

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  • Some States Are Seeking to Deregulate Child Care. Advocates Are Fighting Back – The 74

    Some States Are Seeking to Deregulate Child Care. Advocates Are Fighting Back – The 74


    Join our zero2eight Substack community for more discussion about the latest news in early care and education. Sign up now.

    Content warning: This story includes details of an infant’s death.

    After Democrats passed the American Rescue Plan in 2021, states were flush with federal funding to help prop the child care sector up. But that money is now all gone, and as Republicans in Congress threaten to pass spending cuts that could further shrink state budgets, lawmakers are trying to find solutions to the child care crisis that don’t cost money. 

    Many have proposed changing the mandated ratios that require a certain number of early educators to care for young kids. Nearly a dozen states have considered rolling back child care regulations, including those governing staff-to-child ratios.

    But while these deregulatory bills are common, it’s not a foregone conclusion that they will pass. Advocates in three states have been able to beat back these efforts in the legislative sessions that just wrapped up by mobilizing a wide variety of people to speak up against these proposals and deploying research-backed arguments about child safety and child care supply.

    Eliminating Ratios Entirely 

    Idaho advocates faced down the most extreme bill. In its original form, HB243 would have eliminated all requirements that limit the number of young children an early educator can care for, leaving it up to individual providers. It would have been the first state in the country to take such a step. 

    Advocates had very little time to fight back. The bill got fast tracked; there was less than 24 hours’ notice before the first public hearing on it in the House. “You can’t get child care providers and parents there in that amount of time,” said Christine Tiddens, executive director of Idaho Voices for Children, a nonprofit that advocates for child-focused policies, noting that it requires moving work schedules and getting people to cover shifts. The bill sailed through the House.

    Eventually, Tiddens said, they were able to put parents and providers in front of lawmakers to warn of the negative consequences. One of those parents was Idaho resident Kelly Emry. On June 10, 2024, she got a panicked call from the home-based child care provider where she had just started sending her 11-week-old son Logan. She dashed to the provider’s home and was told he was dead. The coroner’s report later confirmed he died from asphyxiation. According to Emry, the coroner said the provider put him down for a nap between a rolled up blanket and a pillow and left him there for hours. The provider was caring for 11 kids by herself that day, putting her out of compliance with state regulations that, at the time, required at least two staff members. 

    “It was completely preventable, and that’s what’s so hard for me to come to terms with,” Emry said in a podcast interview in January.

    Emry wasn’t the only one who spoke up. Once the bill got to the Senate, advocates packed the hearing and overflow rooms with several hundred people. Among the 40 people who signed up to testify, 38 opposed the bill. Baby Logan’s uncle spoke, as did pediatricians, fire marshals, nurses, the state police, child welfare experts, child care providers and parents. Lawmakers were flooded with thousands of calls and emails from the opposition. Tiddens made sure every senator was sent the podcast interview with Emry.

    The bill passed the Senate committee by a single vote. Advocates decided to try to stop the worst elements, knowing that the bill was likely to pass in some form. They asked a senator who opposed it to “throw a Hail Mary,” Tiddens said. When the bill came to the Senate floor, he asked for unanimous support to pull it and move it into the amending process. He got it. The original elimination of staff-to-child ratios was stripped out; instead, the bill preserved ratios, albeit higher ones than before. Under previous law, Idaho ranked at No. 41 among all states for how high its ratios were; now it has dropped even further to No. 45.

    The victory is “bittersweet,” Tiddens said. She attributes it almost solely to one thing: putting parents, not just businesses and child care providers, in front of lawmakers, which led to the moving account of Logan’s family, still in the midst of raw grief. “How could you listen and not have your heart changed?” Tiddens asked.

    Doubling Family Child Care Ratios

    Advocates in Maryland have fought back against legislation to loosen staff-to-child ratios twice now. Last year, lawmakers introduced a bill to raise the ratios in family child care settings, but it died thanks to “a lot of advocacy,” said Beth Morrow, director of public policy at the Maryland Family Network, a nonprofit focused on child care. As in Idaho, the American Academy of Pediatrics and fire marshals warned about what would happen in the case of emergencies. Children under 2 years old are “not capable of self-preservation,” Morrow pointed out; they might hide when a fire alarm goes off and can’t evacuate on their own. “If there is an emergency you have to be able to get these kids out,” she said.

    The idea returned this year in House Bill 477, this time coupled with looser ratios for center-based care. Family providers are currently allowed to care for eight children but no more than two under the age of 2; the legislation would have doubled that, allowing providers to watch as many as four children under the age of 1. That was a “nonstarter,” Morrow said. It would also have been the first time that these rules were dictated by lawmakers rather than by the Maryland State Department of Education, which would have been barred from changing them in the future. 

    So advocates marshalled research, with the help of national groups including the National Association for the Education of Young Children and Center for Law and Social Policy. They highlighted that there has been no evidence that stricter child care regulations lead to reduced supply. Lawmakers seemed moved by the argument that lower ratios support better health and safety for children.

    During the markup session, the chief sponsor amended the bill by striking the language about higher ratios; instead, the version that passed requires the Department of Education to study child care regulations with an eye toward alleviating barriers for providers.

    Ratio Increases by Another Name

    In Minnesota, lawmakers took a different approach to proposing changes to the number of staff required to care for young children this session. Their legislation avoided mentioning the term “ratios” at all. Instead, the issue was presented as an exemption for in-home child care providers caring for their own children as well. The legislation originally would have exempted as many as three of the providers’ own children from the number they are licensed to watch. “That’s a direct ratio increase, no way around that,” said Clare Sanford, vice president of government and community relations at New Horizon Academy, a child care and preschool provider. “You still have the same number of adults but you’re increasing the number of children that adult is responsible for.”

    In later drafts, the number of children who could be exempted kept being reduced. In the end the legislation didn’t get a standalone vote and the language was left out of the final state budget. The argument that Sanford thinks worked the best was that increasing ratios wouldn’t actually increase child care supply. That’s because, as a brief by NAEYC argues, they will lead to more burnout among providers, which will push them to leave and, in the end, reduce available child care spots.

    The fight is far from over. Advocates in all three states expect lawmakers to try to loosen staff-to-child ratios again next session. Tiddens fears that, although Idaho didn’t eliminate ratios, the idea could spread. “Idaho has often been a frontrunner for harmful legislation,” she said. On the whole, more of these laws have been signed than stopped, said Diane Girouard, state policy senior analyst at ChildCare Aware of America. Ratio deregulation bills pop up “in some states every single year,” she said. “This isn’t just unique to red, conservative states. It has happened in blue states, it has happened in purple states.”

    Advocates who oppose raising these ratios are formulating responses to the child care crisis that preserve safety standards without requiring state funding. In Maryland, for example, Morrow’s organization helped pass a bill that removes legal barriers to opening and operating family child care programs. The hope is that with more solutions on the table to increase child care supply, states won’t look to options that erode safety standards, such as increasing ratios. 

    Tiddens has vowed to fight back. “We’re not going away, and we’re going to show up next session with our own proposal,” she said. Her coalition plans to formulate a bill for next year that “prioritizes child safety at the same time as dealing with the child care shortage,” she said.


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  • Federal Court Blocks Education Department’s Diversity Directive, Marking Victory for Academic Freedom Advocates

    Federal Court Blocks Education Department’s Diversity Directive, Marking Victory for Academic Freedom Advocates


    A federal judge in New Hampshire delivered a significant legal victory Thursday for proponents of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in education by granting a preliminary injunction against the U.S. Department of Education’s controversial February “Dear Colleague” letter that critics had denounced as an unprecedented attempt to restrict DEI initiatives nationwide.

    The ruling temporarily blocks the Education Department from enforcing its February 14, 2025, directive against the plaintiffs, their members, and affiliated organizations while litigation continues. The court determined the directive potentially contradicts established legal protections for academic freedom and may violate constitutional rights by imposing vague restrictions on curriculum and programming.

    The February directive had sent shockwaves through higher education institutions across the country, with many administrators and faculty expressing concern that their diversity programs could trigger federal funding cutoffs. According to court documents, some educators reported feeling targeted by what they characterized as a “witch hunt” that put their jobs and teaching credentials at risk.

    “Today’s ruling allows educators and schools to continue to be guided by what’s best for students, not by the threat of illegal restrictions and punishment,” said National Education Association President Becky Pringle in a statement following the decision. She further criticized the directive as part of broader “politically motivated attacks” designed to “stifle speech and erase critical lessons” in public education.

    The coalition of plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit on March 5 includes the National Education Association (NEA), NEA-New Hampshire, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), ACLU of New Hampshire, ACLU of Massachusetts, and the Center for Black Educator Development.

    Sharif El-Mekki, CEO and founder of the Center for Black Educator Development, emphasized the significance of the ruling beyond its immediate legal implications. “While this interim agreement does not confirm the Department’s motives, we believe it should mark the beginning of a permanent withdrawal from the assault on teaching and learning,” he said. “The Department’s attempt to punish schools for acknowledging diversity, equity and inclusion is not only unconstitutional, but it’s also extremely dangerous — and functions as a direct misalignment with what we know to be just and future forward.”

    Education legal experts note that the case represents a critical battleground in the ongoing national debate about how issues of race, identity, and structural inequality should be addressed in educational settings. The preliminary injunction suggests the court found merit in the plaintiffs’ arguments that the Education Department overstepped its authority and potentially violated First Amendment protections.

    Sarah Hinger, deputy director of the ACLU Racial Justice Program, called the ruling “a victory for students, educators, and the fundamental principles of academic freedom,” adding that “every student deserves an education that reflects the full diversity of our society, free from political interference.”

    The lawsuit challenges the directive on multiple legal grounds, including violations of due process and First Amendment rights, limitations on academic freedom, and exceeding the department’s legal mandate by dictating curriculum content. The plaintiffs argue that the directive created a chilling effect on legitimate educational activities while imposing vague standards that left educators uncertain about compliance requirements.

    Gilles Bissonnette, legal director of the ACLU of New Hampshire, emphasized the importance of the ruling for educational inclusivity. “The court’s ruling today is a victory for academic freedom, the free speech rights of educators, and for New Hampshire students who have a right to an inclusive education free from censorship,” he said. “Every student, both in the Granite State and across the country, deserves to feel seen, heard, and connected in school – and that can’t happen when classroom censorship laws and policies are allowed to stand.”

    The injunction comes at a time when many colleges and universities have been reassessing their diversity initiatives amid increased public scrutiny and policy debates. Higher education institutions have expressed particular concern about maintaining both compliance with federal regulations and their commitments to creating inclusive learning environments.

    The Department of Education has not issued a public response to the court’s decision. The case will now proceed to further litigation as the court considers whether to permanently block the directive.

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