A federal judge in Maryland struck down the Trump administration’s attempts to have the country’s school systems comply with a conservative interpretation of federal anti-discrimination law.
Thursday’s 76-page ruling from Stephanie Gallagher, a Trump appointee, vacates both a Feb. 14 Education Department letter that asserts that federal law prohibits schools from using race in decisions pertaining to all aspects of education — and an ensuing agency demand for schools to certify they would comply with the administration’s views.
“The administration is entitled to express its viewpoints and to promulgate policies aligned with those viewpoints,” Gallagher wrote. “But it must do so within the procedural bounds Congress has outlined. And it may not do so at the expense of constitutional rights.”
Federal courts had already blocked the administration from enforcing the letter and the certification requirement earlier this year, but Gallagher’s latest ruling formally forces the department to reverse course and declares the administration violated the law.
“While the Department is disappointed in the judge’s ruling, judicial action enjoining or setting aside this guidance has not stopped our ability to enforce Title VI protections for students at an unprecedented level," an agency spokesperson said in a statement. "The Department remains committed to its responsibility to uphold students’ anti-discrimination protections under the law.”
In April, the agency delivered an additional ultimatum to state school systems by prodding them quickly comply with the Trump administration’s interpretation of federal anti-discrimination law or risk lawsuits, civil penalties and losing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid.
Gallagher also said that the department’s actions went beyond preventing discrimination — it curtailed free speech. One of the Plaintiffs, the American Federation of Teachers, argued that their members fear that they must “self-censor their speech” during their instruction because of the memos.
“The government did not merely remind educators that discrimination is illegal: it initiated a sea change in how the Department of Education regulates educational practices and classroom conduct, causing millions of educators to reasonably fear that their lawful, and even beneficial, speech might cause them or their schools to be punished,” she wrote. “The law does not countenance the government’s hasty and summary treatment of these significant issues.”
Gallagher’s ruling centered on the agency’s process, not the substance of its positions.
“[T]his Court takes no view as to whether the policies at issue in this case are good or bad, prudent or foolish, fair or unfair,” she wrote. “But, at this stage too, it must closely scrutinize whether the government went about creating and implementing them in the manner the law requires. Here, it did not. And by leapfrogging important procedural requirements, the government has unwittingly run headfirst into serious constitutional problems.”
This report has been updated to reflect a response from the Education Department.
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