Yesterday, the Trump Administration announced plans to eliminate nearly half of all positions within the U.S. Department of Education, an extraordinary step toward executing the Project 2025 playbook to weaken federal civil rights enforcement and eliminate programs and resources vital to the agency’s mission of providing all students, including Black students, with equal educational opportunities. This action represents a dangerous step toward promoting separate and unequal education and will undoubtedly have a detrimental effect on millions of students, parents, caregivers, and educators who rely on the critical supports the Department provides our nation’s public schools.
In response, LDF President and Director-Counsel Janai Nelson issued the following statement:
“Despite widespread public dissent and outrage over the harmful devolution of the Department of Education, President Trump has taken an egregious step toward fundamentally upending the fabric of public education as we know it by eliminating nearly half of the Department of Education’s workforce. For over 45 years, the Department of Education has played an indispensable role in advancing educational equity and safeguarding students’ civil rights. These catastrophic cuts are an affront to this vital mission, further jeopardizing the investigation of rising complaints of race- and sex-based discrimination and abandoning the crucial role of federal oversight and enforcement of civil rights protections in K-12 schools and colleges across the nation. These cuts also undermine the department’s ability to function, threatening essential federal programs that increase access to quality education for low-income students, including Black students, and students with disabilities; student loan and grant programs; and funding that drives research to improve educational outcomes.
These imminent attacks on the Department of Education are nothing more than attempts to circumvent the required Congressional approval to dissolve the federal agency. Through the arbitrary and sweeping elimination of its workforce, this Administration has attempted to gut the Department’s ability to fulfill its critical mission, especially given the massive cuts to regional offices on the front lines of federal civil rights law enforcement.
LDF remains undeterred in our fight to fulfill the promise of Brown v. Board of Education and will pursue every possible avenue to defend the progress that civil rights advocates have fought long and hard to win. We call on members of Congress and state lawmakers to demand that the federal government uphold its constitutional mandate to provide equal education opportunities for all students.”
While recent actions by the Education Department seek to undermine federal anti-discrimination law and lawful measures to achieve educational equity, LDF has partnered with other civil rights organizations to develop resources that equip students, parents and educators with accurate information about their rights.
FAQ on U.S. Department of Education’s Anti-Opportunity Dear Colleague Letter
FAQ on Federal Anti-DEIA Executive Orders
