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March 18, 2025
DEEP DIVE: The Reality Behind the Rhetoric: The Full Picture of the U.S. Department of Education’s March 1, 2025, “Frequently Asked Questions About Racial Preferences” Document and Related Actions
Click here for a new publication, The Reality Behind the Rhetoric: The Full Picture of the U.S. Department of Education’s March 1, 2025, “Frequently Asked Questions About Racial Preferences” Document and Related Actions.
In this new paper, Art Coleman, co-founder of EducationCounsel and a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Office of Civil Rights (OCR), explains in detail how OCR’s new FAQ “erroneously casts doubt about common, lawful practices of schools and postsecondary institutions, and mischaracterizes and misstates a number of governing Title VI legal standards and principles.” Just as the FAQ was OCR’s follow-up to its 2/14/25 Dear Colleague Letter (DCL), so is this new analysis a follow-up to Coleman’s earlier piece about the DCL.
Three key points:
- The FAQ maintains the Dear Colleague Letter’s overreach and conflation of the Administration’s anti-DEI policy aims with settled legal standards, despite shifts in tone.
- USED’s professed adherence to First Amendment principles is undercut by its threats and actions.
- USED’s FAQs contain clear legal errors, with positions at odds with governing precedent.
You can find more detailed summaries and initial analyses of executive actions through March 16 in our ongoing Executive Actions Chart. All of EducationCounsel’s resources related to the Administration’s executive actions are now available in one place by clicking here or clicking on the blue banner at the top of our webpage. Please share any and all of our resources with your networks and anyone who might find them helpful.
Finally, please note that these developments are sometimes changing rapidly so information may become outdated, and nothing in these resources constitute specific legal advice.
Click here to access The Reality Behind the Rhetoric.
These materials have been prepared for informational purposes only and are not legal advice. This information is not intended to create, and receipt of it does not constitute, an attorney-client relationship. Internet subscribers and online readers should not act upon this information without seeking professional counsel.