A Trump-appointed judge has struck down Trump's effort to get DEI out of public schools.
This ruling regards the DOE's February guidance on DEI which aimed to pull funding from public schools that promoted DEI.
Of course this case stemmed from a lawsuit filed by the American Federation of Teachers, among other groups.
Gallagher said in the ruling,
[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. 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.
Plaintiffs have shown that neither challenged agency action was promulgated in accordance with the procedural requirements of the APA, and that both actions run afoul of important constitutional rights. Both challenged actions accordingly must be vacated. The administration is entitled to express its viewpoints and to promulgate policies aligned with those viewpoints. But it must do so within the procedural bounds Congress has outlined. And it may not do so at the expense of constitutional rights.
So now the Constitution matters again?
The purge of DEI from public schools is off the table for the moment, though an Education Department spokesman did say, "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."
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