"In April, the U.S. Department of Education used a landmark law intended, in part, to end racial discrimination to investigate Chicago Public Schools over a "Black Students Success Plan," after a complaint that the program discriminated against students of other races. In July, the department ruled five Virginia school districts had violated another civil rights law, intended to protect women and girls from sex discrimination and harassment, by allowing transgender students to use school facilities based on gender identity, not biological sex."
"The country's federal civil rights laws, written to protect marginalized groups from discrimination, have become an unlikely tool in the Trump administration's efforts to end targeted support for students of color and protections for transgender students. Of this new campaign, the Trump administration insists it is enforcing decades-old civil rights laws as they were intended. Julie Hartman, an Education Department spokeswoman, told NPR in a statement that the administration has a legal obligation "to ensure that federal funds are not sponsoring discrimination against students.""
Federal education officials have invoked civil rights statutes to scrutinize and penalize school policies that target support by race or recognize gender identity. Investigations and rulings have focused on a Chicago "Black Students Success Plan," Virginia districts that allowed transgender students to use facilities per gender identity, and a warning to Denver to adopt biology-based definitions of male and female. The administration contends these actions enforce existing civil rights protections against discrimination. Opponents call the approach a misreading of law and hypocritical. Districts that resist face the loss of federal funding supporting vulnerable students, including those with disabilities and in poverty.
Read at www.npr.org
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