BALTIMORE — A federal district court judge ruled the Trump Administration's termination of teacher training grants over Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts is unconstitutional.
Judge Julie Rubin, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, who formerly sat on the Baltimore City Circuit Court, is ordering the U.S. Department of Education to restart three different grants to a trio of organizations including the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE), the National Center for Teacher Residencies (NCTR), and the Maryland Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (MACTE).
President Donald Trump campaigned on dismantling DEI, and from day one since returning to the White House, he's issued several executive orders looking to follow through.
One order focused on $600 million in Department of Education grants which historically have gone to organizations who've prioritized what Trump considers DEI initiatives.
The three grants in question are from the Education Department's Teacher Quality Partnership Program (TQP), the Supporting Effective Educator Development Program (SEED), and the Teacher and School Leader Incentive Program (TSL).
This is how the judge described what the grant money is used for:
SEED Grant:
(1) Providing teachers, principals, or other school leaders from nontraditional preparation and certification routes or pathways to serve in traditionally underserved local educational agencies.
(2) Providing evidence-based professional development activities that address literacy, numeracy, remedial, or other needs of local educational agencies and the students the agencies serve.
(3) Providing teachers, principals, or other school leaders with professional development activities that enhance or enable the provision of postsecondary coursework through dual or concurrent enrollment programs and early college high school settings across a local educational agency.
(4) Making freely available services and learning opportunities to local educational agencies, through partnerships and cooperative agreements or by making the services or opportunities publicly accessible through electronic means.
(5) Providing teachers, principals, or other school leaders with evidence-based professional enhancement activities, which may include activities that lead to an advanced credential.
TSL Grant:
(1) To assist States, local educational agencies, and nonprofit organizations to develop, implement, improve, or expand comprehensive performance-based compensation systems or human capital management systems for teachers, principals, or other school leaders (especially for teachers, principals, or other school leaders in high-need schools) who raise student academic achievement and close the achievement gap between high- and low-performing students.
(2) To study and review performance-based compensation systems or human capital management systems for teachers, principals, or other school leaders to evaluate the effectiveness, fairness, quality, consistency, and reliability of the systems.
In response the Trump Administration provided these examples below, of grant applications they've received, prompting them to cut funding.
- Requiring practitioners to take personal and institutional responsibility for systemic inequities (e.g., racism) and critically reassess their own practices.
- Receiving professional development workshops and equity training on topics such as “Building Cultural Competence,” “Dismantling Racial Bias” and “Centering Equity in the Classroom.”
- Acknowledging and responding to systemic forms of oppression and inequity, including racism, ableism, “gender-based” discrimination, homophobia, and ageism
- Providing “targeted practices in culturally relevant and responsive teaching abolitionist pedagogies and issues of diversity in classroom management.”
- Providing spaces for critical reflection to help educators confront biases and have transformative conversations about equity.
Rubin believes the Department of Education's revocation violates the General Education Provisions Act (GEPA), which requires changes to the grant approvals process to go through the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).
The APA mandates advanced notice, allowing public comment, prior modifications being made.
Since the Trump Administration's initiatives are contrary to the grants mission, the government argued no notice was needed.
The judge disagreed, setting up a potential appeal.
In her ruling, Rubin makes mention how teachers groups tried linking this case with another DEI related lawsuit filed by Baltimore City which resulted in a second Biden appointed judge issuing an injunction. While acknowledging one had nothing to do with the other, Rubin failed to state how an appeals court overturned the other case.
While conceding that Congress controls the purse strings, meaning only they can technically allocate funding, Trump's lawyers opine it's the executive branch, for which the Department of Education falls under, that has discretion of how the agency spends.
Those decisions, the government contends, are not subject to judicial review under the APA.
Nonetheless, this latest ruling by Rubin is another judicial setback for the Trump Administration, whose is defending a separate lawsuit from Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown over Education Department staffing cuts.
Since returning to office, Trump's faced an onslaught of federal injunctions aiming to block large swaths of his agenda.
Such decisions have raised separation of power concerns, sparking questions of whether Trump should comply or defy, considering courts have no true enforcement mechanism against a sitting President with sweeping immunity and control of the DOJ tasked with implementing judicial orders.
Some critics, including Elon Musk have openly supported the idea of Trump ignoring the courts.
Several attorneys, including Vice President JD Vance, have called out judges for what they perceived to be illegal rulings.
On Tuesday, Trump, like Musk suggested impeachment, generating a response from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who suggested appealing rather than impeaching.
Some lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives have already filed articles of impeachment against some judges for earlier rulings against Trump. Due to a super majority needed to achieve impeachment, it's highly unlikely those efforts succeed.