Education Dept. shares FAQ document about DEI guidance

The Education Department offered more insight Friday into its sweeping guidance that essentially declared all race-based programming illegal, releasing a nine-page document answering frequently asked questions.

In the document, officials seemed to walk back some of the most contentious provisions in the Office for Civil Rights’ Dear Colleague letter, experts told The Washington Post. For instance, the department makes clear that it doesn’t have control over “the content of school curricula,” and officials don’t make any mention of their claim in the earlier guidance that it would be unlawful to eliminate standardized testing “to achieve a desired racial balance or to increase racial diversity.”

Colleges had to comply with the directive by Feb. 28, or else they could face an investigation. Ahead of that deadline, some colleges launched internal policy reviews and removed language about race and diversity, equity and inclusion buzzwords from the names of programs. 

Higher education associations called on the department to rescind the guidance while a group of teachers’ unions sued the Trump administration over the directive. A federal judge has yet to act on that lawsuit, filed last week.

The document clarifies that colleges and K-12 schools can host Black History Month events, “so long as they do not engage in racial exclusion or discrimination.” But the department says any “school-sponsored or school-endorsed racially segregated aspects of student, academic, and campus life” such as graduation ceremonies violate federal law. 

Colleges are still required to ensure that students don’t experience a hostile environment based on race, which is prohibited under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. According to the FAQ, requiring students to take classes or participate in orientation or training programs “that are designed to emphasize and focus on racial stereotypes” would constitute a hostile environment under Title VI. Officials repeatedly noted that OCR investigators will make a case-by-case determination that depends on the specific facts at hand.