Summary
On 24 April 2025, Stephanie Gallagher, a US District Court Judge for the District of Maryland, made a ruling in the civil case of America Federation of Teachers et al. v Department of Education et al. (SAG-25-628). The lawsuit, which was filed on 25 February 2025 and amended on 5 March 2025, sought a judgment declaring that the February 14, 2025 “Dear Colleague” letter (“The Letter”; see Relevant Details section below) issued by the Department of Education (DOE) is unlawful. Gallagher ordered for The Letter to be temporarily stayed by postponing its effective date pending a final resolution. The stay precludes enforcement of The Letter without intruding on the DOE’s ability to enforce existing civil rights law and pursue its enforcement priorities within its legal authority. The ruling was made because The Letter exceeded statutory authority and circumvented proper procedure required by law.
Relevant Details
The Letter, written earlier this year by DOE, made allegations that “educational institutions have toxically indoctrinated students with the false premise that the United States is built upon ‘systemic and structural racism’ and advanced discriminatory policies and practices. Proponents of these discriminatory practices have attempted to further justify them…under the banner of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (‘DEI’), smuggling racial stereotypes and explicit race-consciousness into everyday training, programming, and discipline”.
In the same letter, DOE admonished states and school districts against these practices in writing that the “Department will no longer tolerate the overt and covert racial discrimination that has become widespread in this Nation’s educational institutions. The law is clear: treating students differently on the basis of race to achieve nebulous goals such as diversity, racial balancing, social justice, or equity is illegal”.
The Letter gave some examples of impermissible activities, including eliminating standardized testing to achieve a desired racial balance or to increase racial diversity. Allowing active DEI programs was also given as an impermissible activity, as DOE alleged that DEI activities “frequently preference certain racial groups and teach students that certain racial groups bear unique moral burdens that others do not…stigmatize students who belong to particular racial groups based on crude racial stereotypes”, and “deny students the ability to participate fully in the life of a school”.
States and school districts were initially given only 14 days to comply with The Letter and were required to “ensure that their policies and actions comply with existing civil rights law”, among other things. The Letter also indicated that acceptance of federal funding was conditioned on compliance and warned that the “continued use of illegal DEI practices may subject the individual or entity using such practices to serious consequences, including (1) termination of funding; (2) actions to recover previously issued funding; and (3) False Claims Act liability”. The certification deadline for compliance was eventually extended to 24 April 2025.
In their complaint, the Plaintiffs argued that The Letter was vague in its meaning and that they would not know which activities, lessons, perspectives, etc. would be considered prohibited. They also argued that The Letter infringes on their First Amendment rights because of “fear that many activities central to their work, their missions, and their employment could jeopardize their federal funding”.
In the ruling, Gallagher cites case law, stating that in “First Amendment cases, the injury-in-fact element is commonly satisfied by a sufficient showing of self-censorship, which occurs when a claimant is chilled from exercising his right to free expression” Cooksey v. Futrell, 721 F.3d 226, 235 (4th Cir. 2013).
The Defendants’ only argument was that The Letter is “nothing new”, only a mere restatement of existing anti-discrimination law; however, Gallagher disagreed with this argument, referencing that The Letter made new provisions related to curricula and teachers’ speech. Gallagher’s ruling stated that the Plaintiffs had “established standing to challenge the Letter.”
Gallagher further wrote that “the Letter’s directives are changes from prior law that appear binding… the government’s insistence that the Letter merely restates schools’ obligations under civil rights law is unpersuasive”.
Gallagher ruled The Letter is subject to requirements that have not been met because of the language in The Letter and associated actions surrounding it, including the establishment of an “End DEI Portal” for “students, parents, teachers, and the broader community” to report discrimination”. The Letter also defies legal requirements because of the failure of the DOE to allow interested persons to “participate in the rulemaking through submission of written data, views, or arguments”. The latter is typically done in a public comment period that usually lasts 30-60 days, followed by publication of the final rules in the Federal Register 30 days before their effective date and 60 days for major rules. The DOE’s activities surrounding The Letter have not followed any of these legal precedents.
Further, Gallagher writes that “the Letter is unambiguous, and the government is not entitled to any deference”. According to Gallagher, “there is no basis … for concluding that discussion of race—in the two ways highlighted in the Letter or otherwise—is ever, or especially always, discrimination”. She states that “The government cannot proclaim entire categories of classroom content discriminatory to side-step the bounds of its statutory authority”. It is also stated that DOE “failed to consider a number of required factors”.
Gallagher’s ruling indicated a significant concern about “DOE’s change in position regarding its authority to regulate curriculum, and its decision to prospectively categorize content as discriminatory”. Further, the ruling indicates that the DOE’s misapprehension of existing state and federal standards led it to issue “a guidance that conflicts with its own regulations and case law”. She further cites code 34 C.F.R. § 100.5, which states that educational institutions “may properly give special consideration to race, color, or national origin to make the benefits of its program more widely available to such groups, not then being adequately served… the services and benefits of the program or activity [an educational institution] administers may not in fact be equally available to some racial or nationality groups”.
Regarding the constitutionality of The Letter, the Defendants argued that it “only targets discriminatory conduct and does not reach speech at all”. However, Gallagher disagreed, stating that “the Letter at least, where it regulates specific forms of speech of a particular viewpoint by declaring them discriminatory, [is] therefore unlawful”.