The U.S. Department of Energy canceled plans to issue a rule that would have removed a regulatory requirement for colleges and schools receiving funding from the agency. The requirement in question is meant to level the playing field between women and men in athletics.
The Energy Department’s rule would have no longer required colleges and schools receiving Energy Department funding to provide women or girls a chance to try out for contactless men’s or boys’ sports teams in cases where no equivalent sports team exists for them.
Under current requirements, for example, girls must be allowed to try out for spots on the boys’ baseball team if there is no girls’ softball team.
In May, the Trump administration quietly proposed rescinding this requirement, along with a handful of other regulatory changes, by issuing a “direct final rule.” That process is usually reserved for uncontroversial regulations that are not expected to receive pushback, allowing an agency to issue new policies without incorporating changes based on public feedback.
On Sept. 10, however, the Energy Department said it was withdrawing the proposed change entirely after it received over 21,000 comments — many of them opposing the changes. The rescission came after the administration initially delayed the rule’s July 14 effective date until Sept. 12 amid significant pushback.
The withdrawal was celebrated by Title IX civil rights advocates, who worried the rule would reverse progress for girls and women in sports.
However, a handful of other changes remain — albeit delayed — on the Energy Department’s docket that would impact colleges and schools receiving the agency’s grants.
For example, the agency still plans to move forward with a rule that would no longer require colleges and schools to prevent systemic racial discrimination that may result from seemingly neutral policies.The Energy Department has twice delayed that proposal’s effective date as a result of pushback, most recently to Dec. 9.
“Withdrawing the athletics rule shows that public pressure works, but continuing forward with the other rules shows this administration is still determined to chip away at opportunities for women, girls, and communities of color,” said Shiwali Patel, senior director of safe and inclusive schools at the National Women’s Law Center, in a Sept. 9 statement. “Rescinding these other rules will deepen inequities in education and beyond.”
Patel and other education civil rights experts have expressed concern over the rules being issued through an expedited process.
The Energy Department did not comment in time for publication. However, it said in its notice of the proposal’s withdrawal that it is allowed to propose a rule in the future “that may be substantially identical or similar to those previously proposed.”
The administration’s decision to release the proposed rules through the Energy Department and attempt to push them through quickly marks a shift from typical K-12 policymaking, which is usually left to the U.S. Department of Education, some education experts said in July.
It could have been a trial run: Had the Energy Department’s proposals gone uncontested, it’s possible other agencies would have also tried setting education policy this way, they said.
“This is a paradigm shift on the part of how the federal government articulates and connects some of these tools to their education priorities,” Kenneth Wong, an education policy professor at Brown University, said in July, when the rules were originally set to take effect. “Basically every single school, in practically every single school district, has some grants from one of the many agencies in the federal government.”
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The U.S. Department of Energy canceled plans to issue a rule that would have removed a regulatory requirement for schools receiving funding from the agency. The requirement in question is meant to level the playing field between boys and girls in athletics.
The Energy Department’s rule would have no longer required schools receiving Energy Department funding to provide girls a chance to try out for contactless boys’ sports teams in cases where no equivalent sports team exists for them. Under current requirements, for example, girls must be allowed to try out for spots on the boys’ baseball team if there is no girls’ softball team.
In May, the Trump administration quietly proposed rescinding this requirement, along with a handful of other regulatory changes, by issuing a “direct final rule.” That process is usually reserved for uncontroversial regulations that are not expected to receive pushback, allowing an agency to issue new policies without incorporating changes based on public feedback.
On Sept. 10, however, the Energy Department said it was withdrawing the proposed change entirely after it received over 21,000 comments — many of them opposing the changes. The rescission came after the administration initially delayed the rule’s July 14 effective date until Sept. 12 amid significant pushback.
The withdrawal was celebrated by Title IX civil rights advocates, who worried the rule would reverse progress for girls and women in sports.
However, a handful of other changes remain — albeit delayed — on the Energy Department’s docket that would impact schools receiving the agency’s grants.
For example, the agency still plans to move forward with a rule that would no longer require schools to prevent systemic racial discrimination that may result from seemingly neutral policies.The Energy Department has twice delayed that proposal’s effective date as a result of pushback, most recently to Dec. 9.
“Withdrawing the athletics rule shows that public pressure works, but continuing forward with the other rules shows this administration is still determined to chip away at opportunities for women, girls, and communities of color,” said Shiwali Patel, senior director of safe and inclusive schools at the National Women’s Law Center, in a Sept. 9 statement. “Rescinding these other rules will deepen inequities in education and beyond.”
Patel and other education civil rights experts have expressed concern over the rules being issued through an expedited process.
The Energy Department did not comment in time for publication. However, it said in its notice of the proposal’s withdrawal that it is allowed to propose a rule in the future “that may be substantially identical or similar to those previously proposed.”
The administration’s decision to release the proposed rules through the Energy Department and attempt to push them through quickly marks a shift from typical K-12 policymaking, which is usually left to the U.S. Department of Education, some education experts said in July.
It could have been a trial run: Had the Energy Department’s proposals gone uncontested, it’s possible other agencies would have also tried setting education policy this way, they said.
“This is a paradigm shift on the part of how the federal government articulates and connects some of these tools to their education priorities,” Kenneth Wong, an education policy professor at Brown University, said in July, when the rules were originally set to take effect. “Basically every single school, in practically every single school district, has some grants from one of the many agencies in the federal government.”
Families, educators and advocates of children and youth who are both blind and deaf are scrambling to reclaim abruptly canceled federal funding that they say is a “lifeline” for students’ educational and developmental progress.
A notice of noncontinuation from the U.S. Department of Education recently went to four deafblind projects in Washington, Oregon, Wisconsin and a consortium of New England states including Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont. Advocates say the notice was sent Sept. 5, although a letter reviewed by K-12 Dive is dated Aug. 27.
The noncontinuation notice to Oregon’s deafblind project fiscal agent, for example, said continuing the project “would be in conflict with agency policy and priorities, and so is not in the best interest of the Federal Government.”
The notice quoted from the project’s 2023 grant application, which said the grant’s partners “are committed to working to improve strategies, interventions, processes to address inequities, racism, bias, and system marginalization of culturally, linguistically, or dis/ability groups.”
Combined, the four projects’ grants were to total about $1 million for the coming fiscal year, according to figures provided by deafblind advocates. The grants in those states serve about 1,365 children and their families, advocates said.
The projects are going into the third year of a five-year grant. The federal funding supports deafblind youth who attend public, private, and charter schools or are homeschooled. It is used for teacher training and professional development, family resources and training, educational materials and technology, and other activities.
The Education Department’s notice to the fiscal agent of Oregon’s deafblind project gave the grant manager seven days to request reconsideration.
The Trump administration has been eliminating programs promoting diversity, equity and inclusion at the K-12 and higher education levels — and across the government. As such, the disability rights community has been concerned that those moves would also target efforts that support students and people with disabilities.
Moreover, education programs have been singled out as the Education Department under President Donald Trump has pushed to reduce federal red tape and bureaucracy by giving states more control over how they spend federal funds.
Serenity Elliott receives services at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, Ore., in March 2025.
Permission granted by Candice Elliott
Deafblindness and the DEI debate
According to the National Center on DeafBlindness, a national child count conducted Dec. 1, 2023, showed 10,692 children and young adults from birth to age 26 were eligible for state deafblind project services.
Deafblindness is a low-incidence disability, meaning it’s not considered common. The combination of hearing and vision impairments “causes such severe communication and other developmental and educational needs that students cannot be accommodated in special education programs solely for children with deafness or children with blindness,” according to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
Deafblindness is one of the disability categories that qualify for IDEA services. The recent notices of noncontinuation of the IDEA Part D grants to state deafblind projects do not impact IDEA Part B and Part C services for developmental and educational supports to infants, toddlers, children and young adults with disabilities.
Most states have their own deafblind projects that receive federal funding through IDEA, although some states partner in a multistate consortium, according to the National Center on DeafBlindness, a federally funded technical assistance center.
“Make no mistake, losing these funds will directly impact our ability to serve some of our most vulnerable kids.”
Jill Underly
Wisconsin state superintendent
The Oregon DeafBlind Project had expected to receive $133,543 for the new fiscal year starting Oct. 1. The state serves about 114 children and youth with deafblindness.
Project Director Lisa McConachie said the noncontinuance is “nonsensical,” especially since an annual report she submitted earlier this year had no mention of DEI. She said in 2023, at the time of the project’s application under the Biden administration, grantees were required to add language about DEI as part of the application.
McConachie is employed by Portland Public Schools, which is the fiscal agent for the grant. She said on Tuesday that she was planning to file an appeal for reconsideration to reinstate the grant.
“We’re just kind of stuck for a minute,” McConachie said.
Although the project is funded through September, she said she worries about what could happen to children if the grant doesn’t continue. “To stop support and services right during school is just so disruptive. It’s time that will be lost and never recovered.”
Portland Public Schools only became the state’s fiscal grant manager for the deafblind project in the last two years, even though the grant has been ongoing for decades. In that time, the school system and its partners have been building connections and developing more educator, student and family supports, McConachie said.
“We’ve made all these connections and started to really move the dial for folks, and now we’re going to be stopped,” she said.
In Wisconsin, state Superintendent Jill Underly blasted the grant termination.
“Make no mistake, losing these funds will directly impact our ability to serve some of our most vulnerable kids,” Underly said in a Tuesday statement. “Wisconsin had planned work with these funds that includes direct support for deafblind learners and their families and efforts to recruit and retain new special education teachers. We are asking for a reconsideration to protect these valuable projects.”
Underly said the state’s five-year grant totals more than $550,000 and helps serve 170 children and youth from birth through age 21.
In a statement to K-12 Dive, Savannah Newhouse, U.S. Education Department press secretary, said the department re-awarded over 500 IDEA Part D grants and did not continue fewer than 35 grants that do not align with the Trump administration’s priorities.
Examples from the applications for grants that weren’t continued, according to Newhouse, include:
An early childhood technical assistance center that indicated itsframework must “address the systemic racism that permeates all aspects of society,” to be achieved by “enhancing equity content within early childhood preparation programs.”
A school for the blind that indicated it “must embed the values of diversity, equity and inclusion in all aspects of our work.”
Embedding of ‘cultural humility’ as a significant aspect of all training provided to federally funded agencies supporting adults with disabilities.
“Many of these use overt race preferences or perpetuate divisive concepts and stereotypes, which no student should be exposed to,” Newhouse said. “The non-continued grant funds are not being cut; they are being re-invested immediately into high quality programs that better serve special needs students.”
The Lydon family, from Dallas, Ore., pose for a photo in October 2024.
Permission granted by LB Photography Ink
Educational and family supports
Parent Candice Elliott said connecting with the close network of deafblind families, educators and experts in Oregon was “life-changing” when she adopted her daughter Serenity seven years ago. Serenity, now 12, has deafblindness and other medical challenges. She was also the only deafblind student in her school district.
“Our deafblind kids have a lot of problems, and you just don’t meet other people who have issues like this,” Elliott said. She said her family benefited from experts who helped her communicate with her daughter and also connected her with other families in the same situation. Those parents lean on each other for expertise and emotional support, she said.
Now, Elliott is the one mentoring new families. She was working with others to organize an annual family weekend in October that would bring families from across the state together to hear from national experts, learn about high school transition services, and gain parent-to-parent advice and support.
Because the funding is ending, the project canceled the parent weekend. However, Elliott said, parents are organizing one on their own.
“What’s really important is that we learn,” Elliott said about the family weekend. “We have an education we get. We learn about how to support our kids. We learn about just how to help each other.”
Audra Lydon lives in rural Dallas, Oregon. She was a police and fire dispatcher and a single mother when she brought her daughter, Aingelise, home from the hospital 20 years ago. In addition to being deafblind, Aingelise is quadriplegic and has multiple, complex medical needs.
“I had no experience, really, with anything related to either her medical needs or her communication needs, and specifically the deafblindness,” Lydon said.
After connecting with the state’s deafblind project, she learned strategies for communicating with Aingelise and what supports work best for her daughter. The project also helped her connect with other families who could understand and empathize with the joy and challenges of raising Aingelise.
Lydon said she worries that the sudden stop to funding will cause Aingelise’s teacher to move away. Deafblind teachers are highly specialized to work with students with deafblindness who require supports in communication, access and literacy.
The loss of funding will harm the development of many children, Lydon said. “You can’t just pull services for two years from kids. And I think what people also don’t understand is developmentally, if kids lose out for two years during a really important developmental stage, recouping that for any child is difficult,” but would be especially challenging for students with deafblindness, she said.
Lydon added, “Pulling services without notice or plan is entirely unethical and frankly speaks to the deep lack of understanding of the deafblind community.”
“The non-continued grant funds are not being cut; they are being re-invested immediately into high quality programs that better serve special needs students.”
Savannah Newhouse
U.S. Education Department press secretary
In Washington state, parent Lanya Elsa said the IDEA Part D grant has been vital, because children with deafblindness have complex and individualized needs.
“There’s just no way for a school district to have the qualified personnel and knowledge needed for something that’s so rare, because they may only have one child in that district” with deafblindness, she said.
Elsa, parent to two sons ages 26 and 17 with deafblindness, is a special education researcher and former director of the Idaho Project for Children and Youth with Deaf-Blindness. Because of the supports her sons and her family received, she said, her older son, Conner, is employed at a major company, and her younger son, Dalton, is a high school senior preparing for college.
“I look at my kids and what they’ve been able to accomplish, ” said Elsa, adding that she worries about families newly adjusting to a deafblindness diagnosis. “What if these families don’t have the same opportunities that our family had? I can’t even imagine, because we have nothing else.
The U.S. Department of Educationis ending funding to several grant programs for minority-serving institutions, calling them racially discriminatorybecause colleges must enroll certain shares of underrepresented students to qualify for the awards.
In fiscal 2025, the department had been expected to award $350 million in grants to benefit institutions serving large shares of Alaska Native, Asian American,Black, Hispanic, Native American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students.The agency said on Wednesday it will redirect the funding to other programs “that advance Administration priorities.”
The announcement quickly drew criticism from college leaders, lawmakers and higher education organizations, who argued that cutting the grants would harm students and damage colleges that rely on the funding.
Dive Insight:
The cut grants have supported myriad initiatives at MSIs, such as purchasing laboratory equipment, improving buildings and classrooms, supporting student services like tutoring, and establishing endowment funds.
Eliminating the funding will irreparably harm students, Mildred García, chancellor of the California State University system, said in a Wednesday statement. She panned the move, noting that all but one of the CSU system’s 22 universities are Hispanic-serving institutions.
“Without this funding, students will lose the critical support they need to succeed in the classroom, complete their degrees on time, and achieve social mobility for themselves and their families,” García said.
Higher education leaders also said the funds benefit all students.
“The funds granted to HSIs have never supported only Latino students,” David Mendez, interim CEO of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, said in a statement on Wednesday. “These funds strengthen entire campuses, creating opportunities and resources that benefit all students, especially those pursuing STEM fields, as well as enhancing the communities where these colleges and universities are located.”
University of Hawaiʻi President Wendy Hensel voiced concernsspecifically about the impact the move would have across the public 10-campus system.
“It will affect all of our students, the programs that support them and the dedicated staff who carry out this work,” Hensel said in a Wednesday statement.
However, the Education Department took issue with the eligibility requirements for colleges to receive grants.
For instance, to be eligible for grants for the Developing Hispanic-Serving Institutions program, colleges must have student bodies where at least 25% of learners are Hispanic. For grants under the Minority Science and Engineering Improvement program, which is meant to encourage underrepresented students to enter STEM fields, colleges must have student bodies where 50% of learners belong to underrepresented racial or ethnic minority groups.
“To further our commitment to ending discrimination in all forms across federally supported programs, the Department will no longer award Minority-Serving Institution grants that discriminate by restricting eligibility to institutions that meet government-mandated racial quotas,” U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement on Wednesday.
McMahon said the department wants to work with Congress to “reenvision these programs to support institutions that serve underprepared or under-resourced students without relying on race quotas.”
The Education Department’s decision Wednesday targets some of the very grants over which it is currently being sued by the state of Tennessee and Students for Fair Admissions, the anti-affirmative action group that successfully sued to end race-conscious admissions at colleges.In a lawsuit filed in June, the plaintiffs argued that grants for HSIs are discriminatory due to their eligibility requirements.
In a July memo, the U.S. Department of Justice said it would not defend the grant programs. Solicitor General D. John Sauer said the agency determined that they violated the constitutional right to equal protection under the law.
The Education Department said it will still disburse roughly $132 million in grant funding for fiscal year 2025 that Congress has mandated to be spent for MSIs. “The Department continues to consider the underlying legal issues associated with the mandatory funding mechanism in these programs,” the agency added.
The Education Department did not answer Higher Ed Dive’s questions Thursday but cited a Wednesday article from online news publication RealClearPolitics.
A senior administration official told RealClearPolitics that the changes would not impact historically Black colleges and universities.The federal designation of HBCU does not include any enrollment criteria. Instead, a college must have been established prior to 1964 and have a principal mission that “was, and is, the education of Black Americans,” according to federal statute.
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Dive Brief:
The U.S. Department of Education plans to propose regulations for “streamlining” the process for pulling federal funding from the colleges it determines have violated civil rights law.
The notice of the forthcoming proposal was published in the Trump administration’s Spring 2025 Unified Agenda, which provides a glimpse of the federal government’s regulatory priorities and schedule for releasing new rules.
The new proposal — which could be released this month — is intended to simplify the process for the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights to seek “termination of Federal financial assistance to institutions that intentionally violate Federal civil rights laws and refuse to voluntarily come into compliance,” the notice says.
Dive Insight:
Under the Trump administration, the Education Department and other agencies have opened a flurry of civil rights investigations into colleges and K-12 schools. Some have targeted their diversity efforts and policies that allow transgender students to play on teams and use bathrooms aligning with their gender identities. Others have accused colleges of failing to address antisemitism.
Amid these investigations, the Trump administration has pressured colleges to strike deals with the federal government by freezing or pulling vast sums of federal research funding.
The University of Pennsylvania, for instance, resolved an Education Department investigation in July by agreeing to bar transgender women from competing on women’s sports teams. Penn also agreed to give Division I titles and records to cisgender women who had lost against Lia Thomas, a transgender woman who last competed on the university’s swim team in 2022.
The deal came after the Trump administration had pulled $175 million in federal contracts from Penn. Similarly, Columbia University and Brown University — which were both accused of failing to address campus antisemitism — have paid lofty sums to settle the administration’s allegations after the federal government froze hundreds of millions of dollars of their research grants.
The notice in the Unified Agenda says the Education Department plans to align civil rights enforcement procedures better with statutory requirements. The agency’s new regulations would pertain to enforcement of Title IX and Title VI. Title IX bars discrimination based on sex, while Title VI prohibits discrimination based on race, color or national origin.
The department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
Not every college targeted by the administration has been pressured into striking a deal.
The Trump administration froze $2.2 billion from Harvard University after the Ivy League institution refused to yield to demands to make sweeping changes to its admissions, hiring and campus policies. Harvard took the administration to court over the frozen funds, with a federal judge ruling in the university’s favor this week.
The Trump administration had said it was pulling the funding because the university had not done enough to address antisemitism on campus. Yet the judge overseeing the case said the evidence does not “reflect that fighting antisemitism was Defendants’ true aim in acting against Harvard.”
The Unified Agenda also provides a look at the agency’s other regulatory priorities, with changes coming down the pike for rules governing accreditation, the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, and colleges’ reporting requirements for foreign gifts and contracts.
The Education Department recently kicked off the process to craft regulations to implement the sweeping changes mandated by the massive domestic policy bill passed by Republicans this summer.
The legislation will phase out Grad PLUS loans, which allow graduate and professional students to borrow up to the cost of attendance. It also creates lifetime federal loan limits, with a cap of $100,000 for most graduate students and $200,000 for professional students. And it will consolidate a handful of federal loan repayment options into just two — one income-based repayment plan and one standard plan with fixed payments.
Additionally, the policy package threatens to cut off federal student loan eligibility to college programs that can’t prove they provide an earnings boost. Undergraduate programs, for example, must show that at least half of their graduates earn more than a typical high school student in their state.
The American Council on Education and over 40 other higher education groups have urged the Education Department to work with Congress to delay implementing these changes until July 1, 2027.
The Education Department is currently on track to issue the rules no earlier than March 2026 — and likely later than that given the complexity of the law, according to the letter. As a result, the regulations would “impose major changes to financial aid and student loan repayment for millions of students and borrowers only months before they take effect,” the organizations said.
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Dive Brief:
House Republicans on Monday proposed a 15% cut to the U.S. Department of Education’s budget for the 2026 fiscal year, in line with President Donald Trump’s own plan to deeply reduce funding to the agency.
The plan would advance several of Trump’s key budget proposals, including deep cuts to the Education Department and certain federal student aid programs. However, the plan would reject some of the Trump administration’s proposals, including by preserving the maximum Pell Grant at $7,395.
House lawmakers will need to eventually square their proposals with the Senate, which is considering a different proposal that would largely maintain the Education Department’s current level of discretionary funding.Lawmakers face a government shutdown if they don’t fund the government or pass a stopgap budget measure by Oct. 1.
Dive Insight:
The House Appropriations Committee’s education subcommittee will mark up the proposal Tuesday evening. Robert Aderholt, an Alabama Republican who chairs the subcommittee, framed the proposal as being in line with the priorities of the Trump administration. Trump has pitched deep spending cuts at the Education Department with the ultimate goal of closing the agency.
“Even last year, we were dedicated to getting government spending under control,” Aderholt said in a Monday statement. “But now, it’s particularly encouraging to have a partner in the White House that shares this commitment.”
The House panel’s plan would reduce funding for the Education Department to $67 billion. That’s in line with Trump’s own budget proposal, which critics argued would reduce access to college.
Like Trump’s proposal, the House plan would eliminate all funding for the Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant program, according to committee Democrats, who have slammed the proposal. FSEOG, which provides need-based financial aid to undergraduate students, was allocated $910 million in fiscal 2025.
It would similarly make deep cuts to the Federal Work-Study program, which provides part-time jobs to college students who demonstrate sufficient financial need. The federal government currently pays up to 75% of students’ wages, while employers pay the remainder.
The plan would reduce funding to the program to $779 million, $451 million less than 2025 levels, according to committee Democrats. The Trump administration has proposed even deeper cuts, calling for the program to receive only $250 million in the 2026 fiscal year.
The House Appropriations Committee’s plan would also embrace Trump’s proposal to cut funding to the Office for Civil Rights, which investigates discrimination, harassment and sexual violence complaints on college campuses. Under the proposal, OCR would receive $91 million, a decrease of $49 million.
And it would zero out funding for several grant and fellowship programs administered by the Education Department, including those that support teacher preparation, campus-based childcare for students and foreign language instruction.
However, House Republicans rejected some of the Trump administration’s proposals. For instance, the plan would preserve the maximum Pell Grant, in contrast with the White House’s plan to reduce it by roughly 23% to $5,710.
The plan would also keep funding level for TRIO and Gear Up, two programs that help low-income and other disadvantaged students prepare for and complete college. Trump has proposed eliminating the nearly $1.6 billion in funding allocated for TRIO and Gear Up in fiscal 2025, raising concerns from both Democratic and Republican lawmakers.
The House Appropriations Committee would also cut funding to the National Institutes of Health. It would allocate $47.8 billion to the agency, a $456 million drop from 2025 levels, according to committee Democrats. Trump’s plan, in contrast, called for a nearly $18 billion funding reduction to the agency.
Additionally, the plan seeks to rename Workforce Pell Grants, which will provide funding for programs as short as eight weeks, following Republicans’ recent passage of a massive domestic policy bill. Under the proposal, the awards would be renamed Trump Grants “to reflect the President’s commitment to growing the American workforce and expanding opportunities for American workers,” according to a bill summary.
That would include maintaining funding levels for TRIO, Gear Up, Federal Work-Study and FSEOG. It would also maintain OCR’s current funding level and provide support for teacher preparation grants.
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Dive Brief:
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights alleged Friday that Virginia’s George Mason University has violated civil rights law by illegally using race and other protected characteristics in its hiring and promotion practices.
Craig Trainor, the office’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, accused George Mason President Gregory Washington of waging a “university-wide campaign to implement unlawful DEI policies that intentionally discriminate on the basis of race.”
Under the Trump administration, Trainor and other officials have set their sights on diversity, equity and inclusion programs and other policies that were designed to help historically disadvantaged groups.
The most recent allegations from the Education Department, announced just six weeks after it opened the probe, said the agency determined that the university violated Title VI.The civil rights law bars federally funded institutions from discriminating based on race, color or national origin.
The agency gave George Mason, which is located near Washington, D.C., 10 days to agree with the Trump administration’s proposal to voluntarily resolve the alleged violations.
Under the proposed agreement, Washington would have to release a statement saying the university’s hiring and promotion practices will comply with Title VI and explaining the steps for submitting a discrimination complaint.
The university would also have to review its employment policies, conduct annual training for all employees involved in hiring and promotion decisions,and maintain and share records with the federal government upon request to prove compliance.
The agreement would also require Washington to apologize to the university community “for promoting unlawful discriminatory practices in hiring, promotion, and tenure processes,” the Education Department said.
In a Friday statement, George Mason’sgoverning board said the Education Department notified it of the violation, and it will review the proposed resolution and fully respond to government inquiries.
“Our sole focus is our fiduciary duty to serve the best interests of the University and the people of the Commonwealth of Virginia,” the board said.
The Education Department said it opened the investigation following a complaint from multiple George Mason professors who alleged that university leadership has implemented policies that give preferential treatment to underrepresented groups since 2020.
In it, Washington said that leaders wanted staff and faculty to reflect the diversity of the student population. “This is not code for establishing a quota system,” he added. “It is a recognition of the reality that our society’s future lies in multicultural inclusion.”
He noted that a majority of George Mason’s students weren’t White, yet only 30% of the university’s faculty were part of a ethnic minority group, were multi-ethnic or came from international communities.To achieve the university’s vision, officials should focus on both professional credentials and lived experiences when recruiting employees, he said.
“If you have two candidates who are both ‘above the bar’ in terms of requirements for a position, but one adds to your diversity and the other does not, then why couldn’t that candidate be better, even if that candidate may not have better credentials than the other candidate?” Washington said at the time.
On Friday, the Education Department also cited several George Mason policies it said violated Title VI, including one it said appeared on the university’s website in 2024. The policy said officials could forgo a competitive search process for faculty members when “there is an opportunity to hire a candidate who strategically advances the institutional commitment to diversity and inclusion,” the agency said.
Washington, George Mason’s first Black president, pushed back on the Education Department’s allegations when it first opened the investigation. In a July 16 statement, he said that the university’s promotion and tenure policies don’t give preferential treatment based on race or other protected characteristics.
He also pointed to a “profound shift in how Title VI is being applied.”
“Longstanding efforts to address inequality — such as mentoring programs, inclusive hiring practices, and support for historically underrepresented groups — are in many cases being reinterpreted as presumptively unlawful,” he said.
The U.S. Department of Justice has also opened several investigations into George Mason, including one over its hiring and promotion practices.
Another DOJ probe is looking into the university’s Faculty Senate after its members approved a resolution supporting Washington and the diversity initiatives following the federal investigations, according to The New York Times.The agency has demanded internal communications from the Faculty Senate as part of its investigation.
Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors slammed the probe shortly after it was announced.
“Let’s call this what it is: a gross misuse of federal power to chill speech, silence faculty members, and undermine shared governance,” he said in a July statement. “It is an attack on academic freedom, plain and simple.”
A district court judge has temporarily blocked a Trump administration ban on collective bargaining by two teachers unions in Department of Defense schools.
Judge Paul Friedman issued a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit filed this spring by the Federal Education Association and Antilles Consolidated Education Association, which represent more than 5,500 teachers, librarians and counselors in the 161 schools under the Department of Defense Education Activity. The agency educates 67,000 children on military bases worldwide.
The union sued the Trump administration over a March executive order that stripped collective bargaining rights from two-thirds of federal service workers. The order impacted the Departments of Justice, Defense, Veteran Affairs, Treasury, and Health and Human Services, as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Protection Agency.
The Federal Education Association has been negotiating teachers contracts with the Department of Defense since 1970, while the Antilles Consolidated Education Association has bargained on behalf of Puerto Rico educators since 1976, according to the lawsuit. The current collective bargaining agreements for both unions were approved in 2023 and are set to expire in summer 2028.
But since the order was issued, the lawsuit says, the Department of Defense Education Activity has discontinued negotiations, stopped participation in grievance proceedings and prohibited union representation during educator disciplinary meetings. Members are also no longer allowed to conduct union work during the school day. Requests from educators to access a union sick leave bank with 13,000 donated hours have also been ignored, according to the suit.
“These actions, taken together, essentially terminate the respective collective bargaining agreements and thus cause irreparable harm,” Friedman said in his decision.
A 1978 federal statute allows collective bargaining in the civil service sector. The suit argued that while presidents have the authority to exclude an agency if its primary function involves intelligence, investigation or national security work, “Many, if not most, of the agencies and agency subdivisions swept up in the executive order’s dragnet do little to no national security work, much less do they have a primary function [of] intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative [work].”
The agency declined to comment on ongoing legal proceedings. In a reply to the unions’ lawsuit, Trump administration attorneys said the executive order was within the law and that reversing it would be costly.
“Rather than maintaining the status quo, it would force [the Department of Defense] to undo actions it has already taken to implement the executive order, causing significant disruption and resource expenditures,” the lawyers wrote.
In April, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth authorized a few exemptions for agencies related to the Air Force and Army, but not the teachers unions — despite a push from 45 lawmakers to exclude the school system.
“Ensuring that DoDEA educators and personnel retain collective bargaining protections will ensure that DoDEA can continue to recruit and retain the best staff in support of its mission,” the congressional members wrote in a letter. “Collective bargaining safeguards the public interest, and its history in DoDEA has demonstrated better outcomes for mission readiness, and stronger connections between military-connected families and those who serve them.”
An appeal from the Trump administration is pending. A similar lawsuit from six unions, including the American Federation of Government Employees, resulted in an injunction, but a federal appeals court reversed it in August.
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Dive Brief:
The U.S. Department of Education is investigating Haverford College in Pennsylvania over allegations the institution hasn’t done enough to respond to campus antisemitism.
The department cited unspecified “credible reporting” that senior leaders at the small liberal arts college told Jewish students who reported harassment that they should not expect to be safe, instead telling them to be brave.
Haverford is the latest college facing a federal investigation into antisemitism as the Trump administration seeks to exert increasing control over the higher education sector.
Dive Insight:
The Education Department’s investigation into Haverford focuses on Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination based on race, color or national origin at institutions that receive federal funds.
“Like many other institutions of higher education, Haverford College is alleged to have ignored anti-Semitic harassment on its campus, contravening federal civil rights law and its own anti-discrimination policies,” Craig Trainor, the department’s Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, said in a Wednesday statement.
A spokesperson for Haverford confirmed Thursday that the college had received a copy of the complaint and is reviewing it.
In May, Republican lawmakers called the leaders from three colleges, including Haverford, before the House education committee to discuss how they’ve responded to allegations of antisemitism on their campuses. Committee Chair Tim Walberg said he called Haverford to testify because relatively small colleges were “seeing shocking rises in anti-Jewish incidents and rhetoric” and “antisemitism has taken root at Haverford College.“
Haverford President Wendy Raymond told legislators that the roughly 1,500-student college hadn’t “always succeeded in living up to our ideals” but that she remained “committed to addressing antisemitism and all issues that harm our community members.”
Haverford’s handling of campus tensions since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and the ensuing Middle East conflict have received mixed responses from students.
In 2024, a group of Jewish Haverford students, faculty, alumni and parents sued the college over allegations it failed to protect Jewish students and ensure students could participate in classes “without fear of harassment if they express beliefs about Israel that are anything less than eliminationist.”
Despite questions about the student lawsuit, Raymond declined to discuss individual reports of alleged antisemitism or disciplinary actions with lawmakers.
The plaintiffs amended their lawsuit in January after U.S. District Judge Gerald McHugh dismissed the case, but he again granted Haverford’s request to dismiss the complaint in June. McHugh ruled that the students’ arguments failed to meet the threshold for a Title VI claim, including by failing to show that the college had “deliberate indifference” to antisemitism.
“While Plaintiffs paint a picture of a stressful campus climate for Jewish students, many of the incidents pled fall within the protection of the First Amendment,” McHugh wrote in his decision. He also said the plaintiffs did not demonstrate a “concrete educational impact” resulting from the alleged incidents.
Other Jewish students defended Haverford in an op-ed in the college’s independent student newspaper, saying the college teaches them “to engage critically with different viewpoints.” The op-ed, published prior to Raymond’s testimony, also criticized the House education committee, alleging it was weaponizing antisemitism and calling the scheduled hearing “unmistakably an excuse to target the most vulnerable people on our campus.”
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Dive Brief:
The U.S. Department of Education said it plans to bring back more than 260 Office for Civil Rights staff that it cut as part of its March reduction in force, returning groups of employees to the civil rights enforcement arm in waves every two weeks Sept. 8 through Nov. 3.
The department’s Aug. 19 update was filed as required by a federal judge’s order in Victim Rights Law Center v. U.S. Department of Education directing that the Education Department be restored to “the status quo” so it can “carry out its statutory functions.”
Since March, the Education Department has been paying the OCR employees about $1 million per week to sit idle on administrative leave, according to the update.
Dive Insight:
The update, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, comes as a U.S. Supreme Court emergency order in a separate but similar case allowed the agency to move forward with mass layoffs across the entire department, rather than just OCR.
That case — New York v. McMahon— was overseen by the same judge who ordered on June 18 that OCR be restored to its former capacity.
Last week, Judge Myong Joun said he stood by his OCR order regardless of the Supreme Court’s decision in New York v. McMahon because the students who brought the Victim Rights Law Center case have “unique harms that they have suffered due to the closure of the OCR.”
In March, the Education Department closed seven of its 12 regional offices as part of the layoffs that impacted 1,300 staffers across the entire department.
Civil rights and public education advocates, as well as lawmakers and education policy experts warned that such a significant slash to OCR would compromise students’ civil rights and compromise their equal access to education that OCR is meant to protect.
In April, the Victim Rights Law Center case was brought by two students who “faced severe discrimination and harassment in school and were depending on the OCR to resolve their complaints so that they could attend public school,” said Joun in his Aug. 13 decision.
The Education Department’s update this week that it is returning OCR employees to work is in compliance with Joun’s decision.
After Joun ordered the Education Department in the New York case to restore the department more broadly, the administration filed an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court to push the RIF through.
The department did not respond by press time to K-12 Dive’s inquiry as to whether it intends to likewise appeal the Victim Rights Law Center decision to the Supreme Court.
