Last week, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) announced that the Trump administration withdrew their appeal of a lawsuit which sought to pull funding from schools for providing programs or lesson plans related to diversity, equity, or inclusion (DEI). The U.S. District Court for Maryland originally ruled in favor of the AFT in their challenge to the Department of Education’s lawsuit in 2025.
AFT President Randi Weingarten said in a press release about the decision, “This is a huge victory for kids. In this case, with the stroke of a pen, the administration tried to take a hatchet to 60 years of civil rights laws that were meant to create educational opportunity for all kids.”
Their legal challenge against the AFT was but one of many tactics the Trump administration has been pursuing to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion education and programming in the education system. The Department of Education is also currently investigating a program in Chicago aimed at recruiting more Black teachers, supporting Black students, and promoting Black history education. Colleges and universities are also being targeted for defunding based on their DEI policies and education programs.
In recent years, “DEI” has sometimes been used as a buzzword to indicate unfair preferential treatment for marginalized groups, and has even been used as a pejorative to discount the achievements of people with marginalized identities. In reality, DEI is simply the effort to take into consideration people who would usually be excluded from decisions, processes, or institutions such as workplaces and universities.
