The Ed Department's Anti-DEI Letter Is Dead. Don't Get Too Excited.

Is this particular nightmare over? I don't think so.

Wednesday, this went up on Bluesky.

The occasion is a federal court ruling on the infamous February 14 Dear Colleague letter. That letter was a crystallization of the Trump regime's belief that "civil rights" doesn't mean what you think it means.

The short explanation is that the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the decision that struck down race-conscious admissions establishes that all diversity, equity, and inclusion policies are actually violations of Title VI. Therefore, the only real civil rights violations in this country are the ones committed against white men. And therefore, all DEI programs are a violation of Title VI. 

That belief was expressed through a variety of avenues and policies, but the Dear Colleague letter was a shot directly at schools across the country. And it was dragged into court almost as soon as it was issued.

Last month I reported that the Ed Department had withdrawn its appeal of the earlier ruling against the letter, meaning that the whole thing was doomed.

Except.  

When I wrote that piece, I committed an actual journalism and asked the Ed Department for a comment, and they surprised me by replying. This is what Julie Hartman, Press Secretary for Legal Affairs, told me via e-mail:

The Department has full authority under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to target impermissible DEI initiatives that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or national origin. Title VI has always prohibited schools from racial preferencing and stereotyping, and it continues to do so with or without the February 14th Dear Colleague Letter. OCR will continue to vigorously enforce Title VI to protect all students and hold violators accountable.

In other words, "we will keep doing what we've been doing and we really don't care about the letter."

Perhaps with the letter gone and only things like Dear Leader's edict left to convey the regime's extremely obvious intent, maybe school district and university leaders will say, "Well, without a letter I feel confident that the administration won't come after us for some crazy anti-DEI reason." But I kind of doubt it.

I don't want to dismiss this victory. Certainly this is better than if the courts had sided with the administration. But it feels a little like a ruling that instead of using twelve different ways to announce its intention to do some awful things, the court has told it to knock it off with the sixth type of announcement. 

The ACLU and the teacher unions and people who are fans of the rule of law can certainly celebrate. But I'm pretty sure that the administration let this one go because the existence or non-existence of the Dear Colleague letter has zero bearing on what they intend to keep doing.