Tag: Department

  • Education Department plans return of laid-off OCR staffers

    Education Department plans return of laid-off OCR staffers

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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.

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  • Education Department uses Skrmetti case to bolster Title IX policy

    Education Department uses Skrmetti case to bolster Title IX policy

    Just a week after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to restrict gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors in June, the U.S. Department of Education began citing that decision in findings related to transgender access to athletics. 

    Although the high court’s ruling in U.S. vs. Skrmetti did not directly involve education civil rights law, the Trump administration has relied on it to bolster its stance that Title IX can be used to exclude transgender students from teams aligning with their gender identities.

    The Supreme Court’s decision said a person’s identification as “transgender” is distinct from their “biological sex.” However, it did not touch on whether discrimination against transgender people amounts to sex-based discrimination.

    But the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights is using the decision to inform Title IX cases that have excluded transgender students from protections against sex-based discrimination. The decision’s use in OCR policy is leading to double-takes from Title IX experts, although one said district leaders may not have to change anything for now since the Supreme Court has placed a transgender athletics case on its docket for the next term.

    The Trump administration has cited the Skrmetti case in at least two OCR cases related to transgender access to athletics. 

    In a June 25 press release, OCR cited the case in its finding that the California Department of Education and California Interscholastic Federation violated Title IX by discriminating against girls and women after the state allowed transgender students to play on girls’ sports teams.

    “On June 18, 2025, the Supreme Court upheld a Tennessee law banning certain medical care for minors related to treating ‘gender dysphoria, gender identity disorder, or gender incongruence,’” OCR said in its news release. “In so holding, the Supreme Court acknowledged that a person’s identification as ‘transgender’ is distinct from a person’s ‘biological sex.’” 

    The department also cited the case in its July 27 finding that five large Northern Virginia school districts, including Fairfax County Public Schools, discriminated on the basis of sex when they allowed transgender students to access facilities aligning with their gender identities.

    “There has been a little bit of a selective stretching,” said Kayleigh Baker, an advisory board member for the Association of Title IX Administrators. Baker and other ATIXA attorneys routinely work with school districts to train them on education civil rights laws. 

    “The four corners of the Supreme Court opinions have sort of been extrapolated and sort of merged together with this administration’s interpretation in a couple of arenas. And it seems like this is another one of those,” Baker said. 

    Jay Worona, partner at law firm Jaspan Schlesinger Narendran, said the Education Department did something similar with the Supreme Court’s 2023 SFFA v. Harvard decision banning race-conscious admissions. 

    Worona said in an email that the administration has used the case to argue that “K-12 school districts violate civil rights protections of students when they enact policies and engage in practices advancing DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] despite the Supreme Court’s decision in that case only applying to higher education institutions.” 

    In February, the agency issued a Dear Colleague letter to prohibit the consideration of race in many more aspects of educational programming, including “financial aid, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies, and all other aspects of student, academic, and campus life.” 

    “Although SFFA addressed admissions decisions, the Supreme Court’s holding applies more broadly,” the Education Department said in its letter to districts. “At its core, the test is simple: If an educational institution treats a person of one race differently than it treats another person because of that person’s race, the educational institution violates the law.” 

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  • Financial aid administrators report disruptions since Education Department layoffs

    Financial aid administrators report disruptions since Education Department layoffs

    Dive Brief: 

    • A large majority of financial aid administrators, 72%, say they’ve experienced “noticeable changes” in the Federal Student Aid office’s communications, responsiveness and processing timelines since the U.S. Department of Education’s mass layoffs in March. 

    • That’s according to a July survey conducted by the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. The results also show that “federal support channels for students are breaking down,” including through issues with call centers, NASFAA said. 

    • These disruptions are hampering colleges’ ability to assist students, it said. “Unless federal service channels stabilize, the aid system risks becoming less accessible, less predictable, and less trusted by the very students it is intended to serve,” it added. 

    Dive Insight: 

    When the Education Department moved to lay off roughly half its staff in March, student advocates voiced concerns that the agency wouldn’t have enough workers to carry out core functions, including financial aid services. 

    NASFAA’s survey builds on those concerns. The survey found that higher shares of financial aid administrators surveyed in July said they are experiencing delays and a lack of communication from the Education Department than those polled just two months before. 

    For instance, 59% of officials surveyed in May said they had experienced disruptions in the Federal Student Aid office’s responsiveness, communication and processing timelines — a number that has since jumped to 72%.

    Ellen Keast, deputy press secretary at the Education Department, sharply rebuked the survey. 

    “It is an embarrassment for NASFAA to release a ‘survey’ that blatantly parrots falsehoods and is not representative of the higher education community nor the American people’s overwhelming charge for change,” Keast said in an emailed statement Wednesday. “Clearly, NASFAA is peddling a false narrative to preserve the status quo.”

    An Education Department official accused the survey of having methodological shortcomings. The official pointed to the survey’s response rate — completed by over 549 institutions — saying that represents less than 10% of the roughly 5,800 colleges that work with Federal Student Aid. 

    The official also said questions spurred respondents to report negative experiences and that those polled were overrepresented by administrators working at nonprofit and public four-year colleges, which the agency accused as being the most likely to oppose the Trump administration. 

    Additionally, the official said the mass layoffs did not impact FAFSA staff or Federal Student Aid’s ability to serve customers. 

    Melanie Storey, president and CEO of NASFAA, said in a statement that the survey reflects “the real, everyday experiences of financial aid professionals.”

    “To dismiss these concerns as fabricated or political undermines the expertise of those working directly with students every day, eager to deliver on the promise of postsecondary education, and shows that the administration is not interested in working with experts in the field to achieve the best results for students; instead, it is focused on advancing its own agenda,” Storey said. 

    In the survey, 32% of respondents said they’ve experienced processing delays for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid since May. 

    Earlier this month, the Education Department began beta-testing for the 2026-27 FAFSA form. So far, more than 1,000 students have completed the form, according to a department official. 

    Meanwhile, 49% of financial aid administrators have experienced processing delays with the e-App, the application colleges submit to the Education Department to participate in federal financial aid programs. Among colleges that submitted the e-App, 63% said in July that it still had not been processed. 

    More students are reaching out to their financial aid offices, according to the survey. Sixty percent of administrators said they’ve seen spikes in student questions about the Education Department’s services in the July poll, compared with 45% who said the same in May. 

    While several respondents said students were confused about the FAFSA process or federal aid, not all officials specified whether the inquiries were related to the Education Department’s mass layoffs or other recent federal changes.

    Republicans recently made sweeping changes to the student loan system through their massive domestic policy bill signed into law in July. That includes consolidating the student loan repayment programs into just two options and phasing out Grad PLUS loans, which allow graduate and professional students to borrow up to the cost of attendance. 

    Critics have noted that the Education Department will have to carry out the vast policy changes mandated by the bill with about half the workforce it had before President Donald Trump retook office. 

    U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon has framed the layoffs as the first step to Trump’s goal of eliminating the Education Department and shifting its duties elsewhere — a change that would require congressional approval. 

    A federal judge initially blocked the Education Department’s mass layoffs, but the U.S. Supreme Court lifted that order in July while litigation challenging their legality proceeds.

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  • Education Department rescinds EL equal access guidance

    Education Department rescinds EL equal access guidance

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    Dive Brief:

    • The U.S. Department of Education quietly rescinded Obama-era guidance that called on states and districts to ensure English learners “can participate meaningfully and equally” in school and “have equal access to a high-quality education and the opportunity to achieve their full academic potential.”

    • The 40-page Dear Colleague letter, issued in 2015, commended districts for “creating programs that recognize the heritage languages of EL students as valuable assets to preserve.” 

    • The department said in a statement to K-12 Dive that it rescinded the guidance because “it is not aligned with [Trump] Administration priorities.”  The rescission of the guidance is part of a broader effort from the Trump administration to center the English language above all others.

    Dive Insight:

    The comprehensive and long-standing guidance included information on identifying and assessing potential EL students, evaluating EL students for special education services, ensuring their parents have meaningful access to information, and avoiding “unnecessary segregation” of EL students, among other tasks districts typically undertake when serving English learners. 

    Dear Colleague letters are not legally binding, but are often used to communicate to education stakeholders administration’s priorities and policy interpretations.

    The current administration’s rescission of the guidance follows the department’s closure of the Office of English Language Acquisition, which was shut down entirely as part of the agency’s downsizing efforts that began in March. 

    Before its closure, that office helped ensure that English learners and immigrant students gained English proficiency and academic success, schools preserved students’ heritage languages and cultures, and that all students had the chance to develop biliteracy or multiliteracy skills. 

    The department’s erasure of the office and guidance that would have helped districts and states serve English learners comes amid other efforts from the Trump administration to prioritize the English language.

    In March, President Donald Trump issued an executive order declaring English the national language, despite the country still having no legally established national language. 

    The order undid a Clinton-era order that required federal agencies to improve access to their programs for those with limited English proficiency.

    The recent federal push to prioritize English over other languages and to reduce access for English learners comes at a time when the percentage of English learners in public schools is increasing. 

    There were approximately 5.3 million English learner students in fall 2021, compared with 4.6 million such students a decade prior, according to data from the Education Department last updated in 2024. 

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  • State Department has revoked over 6,000 student visas this year

    State Department has revoked over 6,000 student visas this year

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    Dive Brief: 

    • The U.S. Department of State has so far revoked over 6,000 international student visas in 2025 over allegations that the students had overstayed their visas or broken laws, an agency spokesperson said via email Tuesday. 
    • The spokesperson attributed about 4,000 of the visa revocations to law violations, such as alleged support for terrorism, assault, driving under the influence, and burglary. 
    • The Trump administration’s attacks on international students have contributed uncertainty to the higher education landscape. International enrollment could plummet by 150,000 students this fall, which would amount to a 15% overall decline, according to a recent analysis from NAFSA: Association of International Educators. 

    Dive Insight: 

    The State Department’s news, which was first reported by Fox News, suggests that the Trump administration is continuing to use an arsenal of tactics against international students, including revoking their visas over claims they support terrorist groups. 

    Those allegations have been at the heart of several high-profile cases where the Trump administration has sought to deport international students or green card holders. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, for instance, claimed that Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk had engaged in activities “in support of Hamas” when the administration detained her and sought her deportation in March. 

    However, the State Department had determined days before she was detained that the government lacked evidence that she had made public statements in support of a terrorist group, The Washington Post reported in April. 

    In a May court ruling, a federal judge said the only specific reason DHS cited to justify Öztürk’s detention was her co-byline on a student newspaper op-ed. The piece criticized Tufts’ administration over its response to student government resolutions for the institution to divest from Israel and “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide.”

    Öztürk, who has not been charged with a crime, was released in May while her case proceeds. 

    The State Department spokesperson said the agency has revoked roughly 200 to 300 student visas over terrorism-related claims. The spokesperson said the actions were taken under a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that bars people from receiving visas if they have engaged in or support terrorist activities. 

    The spokesperson did not immediately reply to questions asking for further details about the terrorism-related allegations or whether the students who faced visa revocations were convicted of the alleged crimes. 

    The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration earlier this month over its use of the Immigration and Nationality Act to attempt to deport student visa holders. The complaint alleges that the federal government has infringed on students’ First Amendment and due process rights by using the statute to target their speech. 

    The Trump administration has taken other actions to tighten international student enrollment as well. For one, a State Department policy announced June 18 requires student visa applicants to make their social media accounts public so government agents can review them.

    Consular officers have been asked to review the profiles for “hostile attitudes” toward the U.S. — a vague mandate that “creates significant discretionary power in visa determinations that will no doubt lead to inconsistencies in implementation,” according to a June post from NAFSA.

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  • Education Department details plans to collect applicant data by race, sex

    Education Department details plans to collect applicant data by race, sex

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    Dive Brief:

    • Under a proposed plan from the Trump administration, colleges would have to submit six years worth of application and admissions data — disaggregated by student race and sex — as part of the 2025-26 Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System reporting cycle.
    • President Donald Trump last week issued a memo requiring institutions to significantly expand the parameters of the admissions data they report to the National Center for Education Statistics, which oversees IPEDS.
    • Colleges would need to submit a multi-year report “to establish a baseline of admissions practices” before the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling against race-conscious admissions, according to a notice filed Wednesday in the Federal Register. 

    Dive Insight:

     The Trump administration has repeatedly charged that diversity efforts at colleges and elsewhere violate civil rights law.

    “DEI has been used as a pretext to advance overt and insidious racial discrimination,” according to the Federal Register notice, which was signed by Brian Fu, acting chief data officer of the department’s Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development.

    The additional student data questions — collectively titled the Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement, or ACTS — are meant to create “greater transparency” and “help to expose unlawful practices” at colleges, the notice said. It added that, with more information, the Education Department can better enforce Title VI laws, which bar discrimination based on race, color or national origin at federally funded institutions. 

    Under ACTS, colleges would have to report extensive demographic data for applicants, admitted students and those that ultimately enroll. And for the first year, they would have to do so for every academic year dating back to 2020-21.

    Colleges would also need to report on their graduation rates from 2019-20 to 2024-25, the notice said.

    Officials would be required to disaggregate student demographics by race and sex and cross-reference it with the following data points:

    • Admissions test scores.
    • GPA.
    • Family income.
    • Pell Grant eligibility.
    • Parents’ educational level.

    Previously, the Education Department only required colleges to submit data by race for enrolled students.

    Institutions would also have to report the numbers of their admitted student pool that applied via early action, early decision and regular admissions.

    Graduate student data would be required to be disaggregated by field of study, as applicants typically apply directly to departments, not to the college overall, the notice said.

    The Education Department is gearing ACTS at four-year institutions with selective admissions processes, which its notice said “have an elevated risk of noncompliance with the civil rights laws,” both in admissions and scholarships.

    The proposal says open-enrollment institutions like community colleges and trade schools are at low risk for noncompliance with Title IV in admissions.

    However, the department on Wednesday requested public comment on open enrollment colleges’ policies for awarding scholarships, an area it flagged as potentially providing “preferential treatment based upon race.” It also asked for feedback about the types of institutions that should be required to submit the additional admissions information.

    Public feedback could influence “whether we should narrow or expand the scope of institutions required to complete the ACTS component,” it said.

    The Education Department is also seeking feedback on how it could reduce the administrative cost of the increased data collection.

    It estimated that, across the higher ed sector, the change will create over 740,000 hours of new work.

    U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon fully endorsed Trump’s memo last week, saying the administration would not allow “institutions to blight the dreams of students by presuming that their skin color matters more than their hard work and accomplishments.” But it has yet to be seen how the agency will handle a dramatic increase in college data.

    The Education Department’s workforce has been greatly diminished since Trump retook office. The Trump administration laid off half of the department’s employees in March. Although a federal judge temporarily blocked the mass terminations, the Supreme Court lifted that order last month while the litigation proceeds.

    Peggy Carr, the ousted former commissioner of NCES, warned last month that the dramatic cuts to the department put it at risk of mishandling data and eroding the public’s trust in its data.

    “Accurate, reliable, nonpartisan data are the essential foundations of sound education policy,” the long-time NCES official said in a statement. “Policy that isn’t informed by good data isn’t really policy — it’s guesswork.”

    The Trump administration abruptly fired Carr in February. President Joe Biden had appointed her to the post for a six-year term in 2021. 

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  • Education Department proposes removing trans, nonbinary student categories from mandated data collection

    Education Department proposes removing trans, nonbinary student categories from mandated data collection

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    The U.S. Department of Education is proposing to abandon data collection on transgender and nonbinary students, including on whether they are victims of harassment and bullying and whether school districts have policies prohibiting those incidents, according to a Federal Register notice published this month. 

    The changes come as part of the Civil Rights Data Collection for the 2025-26 and 2027-28 school years, a mandated survey of all public school districts that has been administered for almost six decades. The department noted on its website that the CRDC has “captured data on students’ equal access to educational opportunities to understand and inform schools’ compliance with the civil rights laws enforced by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.” 

    The proposed changes to the upcoming collections also struck transgender students from the department’s definition of “rape” and “sexual assault.”

    Whereas previous collections defined rape as something that could be done to “all students, regardless of sex, or sexual orientation, or gender identity,” the proposed collection says, “All students, regardless of sex, or sexual orientation can be victims of rape” — explicitly striking “gender identity” from the older definition.

    The change “really sends a frankly terrible message to how schools should be responding to allegations of sexual assault and how they should be documenting that and bringing that data forward,” said Brian Dittmeier, director of LGBTQI+ equality at the National Women’s Law Center.

    The department, however, maintained in an email to K-12 Dive that “the definition of rape and sexual assault remains virtually unchanged.”

    “All students means all students, period,” said an Education Department spokesperson on Thursday.

    The department submitted the proposed changes to the Office of Management and Budget for review on Aug. 7 and is accepting comments on the notice until Sept. 8.

    The changes are being proposed to comply with the 2020 Title IX rule, which excludes LGBTQ+ students from sex-based discrimination protections. President Donald Trump’s Education Department told districts in January to follow that rule — published during his first term — as opposed to the 2024 rule finalized under the Biden administration, which protected LGBTQ+ students under the sex discrimination civil rights statute.

    The Education Department is also proposing a change in its Civil Rights Data Collection to exclude transgender and nonbinary students in light of Trump’s January 2025 executive order “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” That executive order directed federal agencies to only recognize two sexes, male and female, and said, “These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.”

    The Education Department has since adopted that stance, and it has attempted to include the definitions “male” and “female” in state policies through its resolution agreements and to exclude transgender students from teams and facilities aligning with their gender identities.

    The decision to now strike those students from the CRDC means the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights — under the current administration and future ones — would have less data on how transgender and nonbinary students fared in the 2025-26 and 2027-28 school years.

    “OCR uses CRDC data as OCR investigates complaints alleging discrimination to determine whether the federal civil rights laws it enforces have been violated, initiates proactive compliance reviews to identify particularly acute or nationwide civil rights compliance problems, and provides policy guidance and technical assistance to educational institutions, parents/guardians, students, and others,” a July 22 statement from the U.S. Department of Education to the Office of Budget and Management said. Other federal agencies, researchers and policymakers also use CRDC data, the department said.

    Transgender and students questioning their gender identity showed higher rates of bullying and poor mental health, as well as the lowest rates of school connectedness, when compared to their cisgender peers, according to the first nationally representative survey data on transgender students released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year.

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  • Justice Department targets ‘unlawful’ DEI in hiring, training

    Justice Department targets ‘unlawful’ DEI in hiring, training

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    The U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday released a sweeping guidance document that could impact school district hiring and training practices, as well as the programming available to students. 

    In some situations, districts could be exposed to legal liability by asking job applicants how their “cultural background informs their teaching,” using recruitment strategies targeting candidates from specific geographic areas or racial backgrounds, and asking job candidates to describe how they overcame obstacles, according to the memo from U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi. 

    Such diversity, equity and inclusion practices could amount to “illegal discrimination,” said Bondi in a statement on Wednesday. “This guidance will ensure we are serving the American people and not ideological agendas.” 

    The DOJ memo contains examples of practices it lists as “unlawful” and says could lead to federal funding being revoked, as well as a list of recommendations, which it says are not mandatory, to avoid “legal pitfalls.”

    The guidance issued to all federal agencies also says the following actions could expose federally funded institutions, including school districts,to legal liability based on race, ethnicity or sex-based discrimination: 

    • Providing teacher training that “all white people are inherently privileged” or training on “toxic masculinity.” 
    • Providing areas, such as lounges, that are primarily meant to provide “safe spaces” for traditionally underserved groups. 
    • Using demographically driven criteria “to increase participation by specific racial or sex-based groups” in programs and opportunities. 
    • Asking employees, including teachers, during training sessions to “confess” to personal biases or privileges based on a protected characteristic.

    Instead, school districts and other federally funded institutions should provide opportunities to all races and sex-based groups without regard to their protected characteristics or demographic goals, instead focusing on “universally applicable criteria” such as academic merit or financial hardship, the Justice Department memo said. 

    The guidance could impact districts’ efforts to make education more equitable, such as by diversifying the teacher pool through Black educator pipelines, training teachers on implicit and explicit biases, and creating academic or enrichment programs to increase engagement from minority student groups. 

    The directive is in line with the Trump administration’s push to pare back diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, including through the U.S. Department of Education. In recent months, the Education Department has increasingly collaborated with the Department of Justice to enforce civil rights laws, often seeking to protect Asian and White students. 

    The guidance from the Justice Department illustrates the major shift in how both agencies under President Donald Trump approach enforcement of civil rights laws, with officials now targeting programs that were often launched to fight systemic discrimination.

    In April, the Education Department announced a Title VI investigation into Chicago Public Schools over allegations from the conservative group Defending Education that the district’s “Black Students Success Plan” implemented in 2023-24 discriminated against students based on race. 

    In May, the department announced another Title VI investigation into Fairfax County Public Schools over a 2020 revision to the admissions policy at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. That policy dropped standardized testing requirements and instead used a holistic review process, which the Education Department said harms Asian American students. 

    In 2024-25, the highly selective magnet school was 61% Asian and 21% White, with Black and Hispanic students making up less than 10% of the student population each.

    The guidance from the Trump administration and the Education Department investigations come after concerns from civil rights groups that recent federal policy changes, along with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, would set back educational equity efforts even outside of race-conscious admissions. 

    Scholarship availability, teacher pipelines and student affinity groups were among the top areas beyond college access that advocates were concerned could be impacted in the wake of that ruling.

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  • Justice Department threatens federal funding for colleges over DEI policies

    Justice Department threatens federal funding for colleges over DEI policies

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    Dive Brief: 

    • The U.S. Department of Justice released guidance Wednesday that threatens to strip grant funding from colleges and other federally funded institutions over what the agency deems unlawful diversity, equity and inclusion practices. 
    • The agency’s memo targets a sweeping set of practices, including offering race-based scholarship programs, allowing transgender women to access bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity and having identity-based lounges or study spaces on campus — even if they are open to all. 
    • But the nine-page memo goes a step further, saying even neutral criteria — such as recruitment strategies targeting certain regions — could be deemed unlawful if the Justice Department determines they are chosen because of their demographic composition.

    Dive Insight: 

    The Justice Department’s memo comes after a federal judge temporarily blocked similar guidance from the U.S. Department of Education that broadly targeted diversity, equity and inclusion programs at federally funded colleges and K-12 schools. The order came in response to a lawsuit that alleged the guidance “radically upends” federal antidiscrimination laws. 

    The guidance from the Justice Department illustrates the major shift in how the agency under President Donald Trump approaches enforcement of civil rights laws, with officials now targeting programs that were often actually launched to fight systemic discrimination. 

    Earlier this month, the National Urban League declared a “state of emergency” for antidiscrimination policies, calling the Trump administration’s overhaul of the Justice Department’s enforcement priorities “an existential threat” to civil rights laws, according to The Associated Press. 

    Like the Education Department’s blocked guidance, the Justice Department’s new memo warns that government officials could pull federal funding from institutions that don’t comply. That threat comes at the same time the agency has ramped up investigations into colleges over their diversity initiatives and their responses to antisemitism on campus. 

    The DOJ memo contains examples of practices it lists as “unlawful” and says could lead to federal funding being revoked, as well as a list of recommendations, which it says are not mandatory, to avoid “legal pitfalls.”

    “This Department of Justice will not stand by while recipients of federal funds engage in illegal discrimination,” U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a Wednesday statement. “This guidance will ensure we are serving the American people and not ideological agendas.”

    As examples of unlawful practices, the agency highlighted race-based scholarships or programs, including mentorship programs or leadership initiatives reserved for members of certain racial groups. 

    The memo could upend admissions. It recommends colleges end programs “designed to achieve discriminatory outcomes” even if they have “facially neutral” criteria, such as targeting scholarships to certain regions to increase enrollment or participation among certain racial groups. 

    “Instead, use universally applicable criteria, such as academic merit or financial hardship, applied without regard to protected characteristics or demographic goals,” the memo said. 

    The memo also takes aim at what it describes as “unlawful proxies” for race and sex. As an example, the memo calls out universities that ask job applicants “to demonstrate ‘cultural competence,’ ‘lived experience,’ or ‘cross-cultural skills’ in ways that effectively evaluate candidates’ racial or ethnic backgrounds rather than objective qualifications.”

    The Justice Department also flagged diversity statements — which typically ask job or graduate student candidates to explain their experience and commitment to diversity and inclusion initiatives — as potentially unlawful if they advantage “those who discuss experiences intrinsically tied to protected characteristics.” The memo said the same of asking for statements from applicants about “obstacles they have overcome,” a common essay prompt for college applications. 

    State lawmakers have likewise targeted diversity statements, with many outlawing public colleges from requiring them in job or admission applications. 

    The memo also said failing to “maintain sex-separated athletic competitions and intimate spaces” could violate federal law. The Justice Department’s examples of those violations include allowing transgender women to use bathrooms, showers, locker rooms and dormitories designated for women, as well as allowing them to compete in women’s athletic events. 

    And it mentions college lounges or other spaces designated for specific groups, such as a “BIPOC-only study lounge.” 

    “Even if access is technically open to all, the identity-based focus creates a perception of segregation and may foster a hostile environment,” the memo stated. “This extends to any resource allocation — such as study spaces, computer labs, or event venues — that segregates access based on protected characteristics, even if intended to create ‘safe spaces.’”

    It also takes aim at diversity training, giving the example of requiring teachers at K-12 schools to complete a DEI training that includes statements such as “all white people are inherently privileged” or touching on “toxic masculinity.” 

    The memo says such trainings could violate civil rights laws “if they create a hostile environment or impose penalties for dissent in ways that result in discriminatory treatment.”

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  • UCLA violated civil rights law, Justice Department alleges

    UCLA violated civil rights law, Justice Department alleges

    Dive Brief: 

    • The U.S. Department of Justice alleged Tuesday that the University of California, Los Angeles violated civil rights law by failing to do enough to protect Jewish and Israeli students from harassment. 
    • The findings stem from UCLA’s approach to a pro-Palestinian encampment that students erected on the university’s campus in the spring 2024 term. UCLA officials declined to disband the encampment for nearly a week, citing the need to balance free speech protections with student and employee safety. 
    • In a letter to Michael Drake, president of the University of California system, Justice Department officials said they would seek to enter a voluntary resolution with UCLA to “ensure that the hostile environment is eliminated.”

    Dive Insight: 

    The Justice Department is also investigating the entire University of California system over similar allegations. That systemwide probe found “concerning evidence of systemic anti-Semitism at UCLA that demands severe accountability,” U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a Tuesday statement. 

    “DOJ will force UCLA to pay a heavy price for putting Jewish Americans at risk and continue our ongoing investigations into other campuses in the UC system,” Bondi said. 

    Justice Department officials gave UCLA leaders until Aug. 5 to reach out about entering a voluntary resolution. They threatened the university with a lawsuit by Sept. 2 if they don’t believe they can strike an agreement with the institution. 

    The Justice Department investigation focused on the pro-Palestinian encampment erected on UCLA’s campus on April 25, 2024. Encampment demonstrators demanded that the university divest from companies with ties to Israel’s military. 

    On the same day it was erected, a university spokesperson told the campus community that officials were monitoring the situation to balance the “right to free expression while minimizing disruption” to the institution’s teaching and learning mission. 

    However, several days into the protest, some demonstrators formed human blockades to prevent some people on campus from moving freely throughout Royce Quad, including students wearing a Star of David or those who refused to denounce Zionism, according to an internal report from a university task force released last October. 

    The task force also found the encampment violated university rules and that the blockades disparately impacted Jewish people. 

    The Justice Department’s letter to UCLA heavily cited the university’s own task force report, as well as 11 complaints the university received alleging that encampment protesters discriminated against them based on their race, religion or national origin. 

    “UCLA’s documentation established that it did not outright ignore these complaints; however, the University took no meaningful action to eliminate the hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli students caused by the encampment until it was disbanded,” the letter states. 

    Violence broke out at the site on the night of April 30, 2024, when counterprotesters attempted to dismantle the encampment’s barricade, The New York Times reported. 

    The counterprotesters attacked those within the encampment, including by launching fireworks into the encampment and hitting the pro-Palestinian protesters with sticks, according to the publication. Some of the pro-Palestinian protesters also fought back.

    Police arrived hours later, though they did not immediately break up the violence. The next day, UCLA officials made the call to have police break up the encampment, resulting in over 200 arrests. 

    “In the end, the encampment on Royce Quad was both unlawful and a breach of policy,” then-UC Chancellor Gene Block said in a statement. “It led to unsafe conditions on our campus and it damaged our ability to carry out our mission. It needed to come to an end.”

    In their letter, Justice Department officials criticized university leaders, alleging they knew that protesters were “engaging in non-expressive conduct unprotected by the First Amendment” and were denying “Jewish and Israeli students access to campus resources” days before they moved to disband the encampment. 

    UCLA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

    The Justice Department findings come the same day the university settled a lawsuit from Jewish students and a Jewish professor, who alleged their civil rights were violated because UCLA allowed protesters to block their campus access. 

    The agency’s letter mentioned the lawsuit’s filings, though it did not refer to the settlement. 

    As part of that agreement, UCLA agreed to pay about $6 million, with the funds going directly toward the plaintiffs and their legal fees, as well as to Jewish groups and a campus initiative to combat antisemitism.

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