The Letter suggests, however, that a wide variety of core instruction, activities, and programs that schools, from pre-kindergarten through post-graduate education, use to teach and support their students now constitute illegal discrimination. 10. For example, the Letter appears to ban the teaching of history and other subjects that acknowledges “systemic and structural racism,” claiming that such instruction is discriminatory. It is not clear how a school could teach a fulsome U.S. History course without teaching about slavery, the Missouri Compromise, the Emancipation Proclamation, the forced relocation of Native American tribes, the laws of Jim Crow, Brown v. Board of Education, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, or the Civil Rights Acts, the Fair Housing Act and the Voting Rights Act without running afoul of this prohibition. 11. Likewise, the Letter appears to ban any existing voluntary associations or student groups, such as a Black Student Union. These groups are open to all yet provide programming to support and amplify the lived experiences of students or faculty who are members of a particular demographic. 12. The Letter appears to ban all programming in support of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (“DEI”), again despite the fact that such programming is lawful and previous presidential administrations of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden have supported such efforts. 13. Finally, despite invoking the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision on college admissions, the Letter goes well beyond that holding and states that many legal, evidence-based, and well-accepted ways to foster inclusivity and increase diversity of all types are nevertheless considered discriminatory by this administration
The American Sociological Association and the AFT are suing the DOE over the "Dear Colleague" letter threatening to withhold funding (or even initiate prosecutions) over accurate historical education.
democracyforward.org/updates/chal...
