Hyper-overreach by the new Office of Civil Rights at ED: Trying to put teeth into the President’s executive orders on DEI and racial preferences, the Department of Education has released an aggressive and unlawful new “guidance letter” that threatens, under the auspices of Title VI, a cutoff of funds for any school district, state education agency, or university that seeks to achieve racial diversity (even through non-racial means), that sponsors racial or ethnic affinity groups, or that includes curriculum exploring issues of race and racism.
The guidance repeatedly misstates the legal import of the recent Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard case, exploiting some of the majority opinion’s ambiguous phrasing as legal doctrine, and extending the principles of the case to diversity considerations in hiring, contracting, curriculum, and beyond. Gone are the carefully considered, legally supported guidance letters of past administrations – replaced by threats of funding cutoffs if universities and school districts fail to comply within “14 days” (of course, there is no such deadline under Title VI, and any effort to cut off funds would have to be the result of a Title VI investigation of a particular district, with appeal rights included).
We hope that the federally funded institutions and agencies that receive this egregious letter will receive solid legal advice about current law (which is not reflected in this letter) and continue the important work they are doing. In the meantime, we look forward to seeing this “guidance” struck down by the courts like so much of the administration’s other lawless overreach. For further reading, here are some excellent statements on the guidance letter from both the higher ed and K-12 perspectives. (And Kudos to the Legal Defense Fund and Lambda Legal, representing the National Urban League, National Fair Housing Alliance and the AIDS Foundation of Chicago in a new lawsuit challenging the three underlying “DEI” Executive Orders on First and Fourteenth Amendment grounds!)
Also coming soon – another “restatement” of the affirmatively furthering fair housing obligation from the new HUD Secretary…
A social housing LIHTC “toolkit”: We are excited to announce the latest installment in our series on LIHTC and social housing – “Moving LIHTC Toward Social Housing – a toolkit,” co-published with the Alliance for Housing Justice. As progressive policy-making moves, by necessity, to the state and local level, our largest affordable housing development program is a great place to start, with enormous discretion given to the state Housing Finance Agencies that distribute these federal tax credits to developers. Our toolkit supports advocates and organizers demanding expanded tenants’ rights, more public and nonprofit ownership, permanent affordability requirements, and a meaningful opportunity to transfer these developments from for-profit to community control.
Reminder – stand up for school diversity! Please come join us next week for the 5th National Conference on School Diversity in Washington, DC (running February 27-March 1, main conference on Feb 28). With everything that’s happening in the federal education policy arena, #NCSD2025 represents an inflection point for the school integration movement. See agenda details and Register here.
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