Dive Brief:
- The Trump administration scored a legal victory on Friday when the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a temporary pause against three major provisions in two executive orders aimed at eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion practices in education and other sectors.
- Acting on those executive orders, the U.S. Department of Education in 2025 told K-12 and other federal funding recipients to halt DEI activities and abruptly canceled DEI-related grants that had already been awarded. The anti-DEI push and resulting grant cancellations caused uproar among advocates and funding recipients, who said equity work they had already begun was in jeopardy.
- While the 4th Circuit ruled against the plaintiffs challenging the underlying orders' constitutionality, the resulting changes at the Education Department are still being litigated, with some successfully challenged.
Dive Insight:
Trump issued two major anti-DEI mandates in the first two days of his second term. Since then, the federal government has fiercely attacked DEI initiatives in K-12, including by canceling vast numbers of grants for diversity-related programs.
The executive orders that spurred a cascade of anti-DEI measures from the Education Department were challenged by plaintiffs including the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education and the American Association of University Professors, which argued they were unconstitutionally vague and would chill protected speech.
However, a three-judge panel decided those groups didn’t have standing to sue over one of the contested provisions and weren’t likely to succeed on the merits of their remaining claims, and it remanded the case to the lower court.
A federal district judge had blocked major provisions of the executive orders last February, but the 4th Circuit temporarily lifted that ruling the next month after the Trump administration appealed.
Friday’s ruling comes after that same three-judge panel unanimously decided to pause the preliminary injunction in the case last March while the case was under review.
While the ruling could be a boon to the administration's anti-DEI efforts, K-12 groups have heavily litigated the impact of both executive orders in question.
In the first contested order, Trump directed federal agencies to eliminate any “equity-related” grants or contracts “to the maximum extent allowed by law.”
That order led to the Education Department revoking a slew of grants, including those related to mental health access, equity assistance centers and more. Many of those grant cancellations are being challenged, with some recipients scoring at least temporary pauses while their cases are pending, according to a Brookings Institution tracker of those lawsuits.
Under the second order, Trump told agency leaders to include in federal contracts a provision requiring recipients to certify that they don’t “operate any programs promoting DEI that violate any applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws.”
The Education Department issued one such anti-DEI certification for districts, triggering at least three lawsuits contesting its constitutionality and resulting in temporary pauses. One of those cases, filed by the NAACP, was settled last week. As part of the settlement, the Education Department agreed that it will no longer attempt to enforce or reinstate its anti-DEI certification.
Since January 2025, over 620 lawsuits have been filed against the Trump administration’s policies and practices, according to an analysis released in January by Democracy Forward. In the education sphere, multiple lawsuits have challenged individual policies in the months after their rollout.
The Brookings Institution’s tracker shows that one of the executive orders contested in the lawsuit decided Friday triggered at least 20 cases in the K-12 sector alone.
The Democracy Forward analysis released in January said that, in these cases, judges have issued court orders against the administration about 70% to 80% of the time.
