State Attorneys General Defend DEI

This article was originally published on Daily Kos.

By Alan Singer

New York State Attorney General Letitia James and Attorneys General from Illinois, Massachusetts, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and the District of Columbia issued a legal response to a Trump Executive Order and a Federal Department of Education “Dear Colleague” letter targeting diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility policies and programming in schools. The letter accusing the Trump administration of misconstruing a Supreme Court precedent creating a “misimpression of the impact of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility programming and its legality.” The Supreme Court decision cited in the Executive Order and the “Dear Colleague” letter is “specific to higher education admissions practices” and did not address school curriculum or services. In addition, federal courts have reaffirmed that “it is not unlawful for a school to implement race-neutral admissions practices in order to increase student body diversity.”

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Alan Singer is a historian and teacher educator at Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York. His most recent books are Social Studies for Secondary Schools, 5th edition (Routledge, 2024) and Class-Conscious Coal Miners (SUNY Press, 2024). Blogs, tweets, essays, interviews, and e-blasts present his views and not those of Hofstra University.