Trump administration investigating Illinois school district for discrimination over ‘privilege walks' and diversity training
The Department of Education is investigating an Illinois school district for allegedly violating federal civil rights law through its diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, the Trump administration announced on Thursday, the latest sign of its opposition to such programs.
'After four long years of the Biden Administration's tolerance for this kind of conduct, the American people returned President Trump to office to end this madness and enforce Title VI,' Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor wrote in a statement, referring to the law barring discrimination at federally funded institutions.
'This Department of Education will not allow districts that receive federal funding to become safe spaces for racial segregation or any other unlawful discriminatory practices,' he added.
The investigation stems from allegations from Dr. Stacy Deemar, a white drama teacher who filed a complaint with the department's Office of Civil Rights
Deemar, with support from the Southeastern Legal Foundation, a conservative advocacy group, accuses the Evanston-Skokie School District 65 of a variety of instances of racism across teacher training and student activities.
These include the directing staff and students to engage in 'privilege walk' exercises, in which participants step forward if they benefit from certain forms of identity-based privileges, as well as hosting specific discussion groups for staff and students with different racial and ethnic identities.
In an April complaint to the department from the foundation, Deemar said faculty had to undergo trainings when they were told that 'white people tend to dominate conversation by setting the tone for how everyone must talk and which words should be used,' and 'white educators who actively disengage from conversations about improving the achievement of students of color and indigenous students are racist.'
The teacher also took issue with the district's Black Lives Matter-inspired curriculum and events, in which teachers were allegedly guided to teach students to 'understand that our country has a racist history that is grounded in white privilege,' while others were told to read elementary school students Not My Idea: A Book about Whiteness by Anastasia Higginbotham, which features an illustration comparing whiteness to a deal with the devil giving participants 'stolen land, stolen riches, [and] special favors.'
The district did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Deemar previously accused the district of misconduct in 2019, prompting the first Trump administration to recognize her claims as valid, findings that were 'hastily suspended' under the Biden administration, according to an April complaint from Southeastern Legal Foundation sent to the Department of Education.
In August of 2024, a federal court dismissed a related lawsuit from the drama teacher, with a judge writing that Deemar 'was not personally subject to racial staff affinity groups, not treated differently from others in terms of her exposure to the school's race-conscious lesson plans for students and teachers, and otherwise not denied any tangible benefits or targeted for negative treatment on account of her race.'
She filed an amended complaint later that year.
The Trump administration has made eliminating diversity policies and shifting the priorities of civil rights enforcement on campus a major part of its early agenda.
In April, the Department of Education threatened public schools with the loss of federal funding if they didn't certify they follow civil rights laws, a stance which the Trump administration argues includes abandoning diversity programs it sees as racist, though federal courts have so far paused this effort.
The department has also used Title VI to investigate scores of major U.S. universities for alleged campus antisemitism, part of the White House's larger campaign against schools that saw prominent pro-Palestinian activist in recent years amid the Israel-Hamas war.
At the same time as the education department has taken on a prominent role in campus civil rights work, the Department of Justice, typically the most prominent arm of the government working on such cases, has seen a mass exodus of civil rights lawyers in recent days, as the DOJ reportedly has encouraged staff to focus on new priorities combatting antisemitism, transgender participation in women's sports, and what the administration deems 'woke ideology' rather than areas like voting rights and police misconduct.
In a potential sign of things to come, the department this week lifted a long-running school desegregation order in Louisiana, one of many such 'consent decrees' established in the wake of the Civil Rights Era.
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