As nearly half the states battle the federal government to maintain discriminatory equity and inclusion practices in public institutions, billions of taxpayer dollars are at stake.
Nineteen Democrat-run states have sued the federal government rather than comply with the Trump administration’s enforcement of race and sex antidiscrimination laws for K-12 and higher education institutions. According to the data-tracking website Burbio, the risk of funding loss for schools is enormous.
In 2024, California received more than $2.2 billion in federal Title I funds. New York received nearly $1.5 billion. Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Michigan all received between $5 and $8 hundred million, Burbio found. All are part of the 19-state coalition arguing they should continue receiving these massive amounts while still teaching race and sex discrimination. These massive dollar amounts typically increase in the millions annually.
In a memo to states issued April 3, the Trump administration reiterated states’ legal obligations in exchange for receiving federal financial assistance and certification under Title VI of federal education code and the 2023 Supreme Court decision against racial discrimination Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. The certification letter stated that “any violation of Title VI- including the use of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (‘DEI’) programs to advantage one’s race over another is impermissible,” and included a late April signature deadline.
Twenty-one states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico announced their intent to sign the letter, but 19 of 22 states that hesitated to sign sued the federal government April 25. Furthering the funding conflict, three federal judges in Maryland, New Hampshire, and Washington D.C. blocked the federal attempts to enforce antidiscrimination measures April 24.
The judges declared schools to be in compliance with civil rights laws that bar race-based discrimination, supporting DEI programs and policies that explicitly promote racial divisions. Attorney generals from the suing states called Trump’s enforcement of the law “onerous” and said threatening $14 billion in taxpayer funds would be “catastrophic” for students.
Widespread inclusion
Encompassing more than 20 million preschool through 12th-grade students, Burbio datasets include board documents, strategic plans, checkbooks, budget documents, state grants, and enrollment trends. In February, the site published data on the widespread inclusion of DEI terms across public school districts. These include job titles, district mission statements, academic courses, and strategic planning and audit processes, highlighting the significant amount of changes needed for schools to comply with the administration’s order.
Another organization, Californians for Equal Rights (CFER), found that of 350 school districts in the state, nearly 90 percent promoted DEI, critical race theory, and critical ethnic studies at some level. That’s because these are state curricular and other mandates in California, as in Minnesota, Illinois, New York, and others.
Burbio found financial statements for school district budgets often provided “poor visibility into district spending,” because many public institutions use generic coding in line-item reporting. This allows schools to obscure how they spend public funds.
A former California educator and administrator, and now president of the California Teachers Empowerment Network, Larry Sand spent nearly 30 years in the classroom and worked as a Title I coordinator.
“As Title I coordinator, I saw firsthand the vast amounts of taxpayer dollars that went to waste,” Sand said in an interview. “Most of my time in that position was spent filling out forms and attending meetings loaded with bureaucratic nonsense. Teachers had plenty of material things at their disposal, computers, printers, etc., but I could not see how any of the billions of dollars spent on the program improved educational outcomes.”
Beyond chronic misallocation of funds, Sand commented on free lunches for kids who had nicer phones than most teachers and whose parents drove more expensive cars. America’s public schools are plagued with failing reading rates and retention issues.
If DEI is killed, parents and children will benefit, resulting in a “saner” society, Sand said.
Ashley Bateman is a policy writer for The Heartland Institute and blogger for Ascension Press. Her work has been featured in The Washington Times, The Daily Caller, The New York Post, The American Thinker and numerous other publications. She previously worked as an adjunct scholar for The Lexington Institute and as editor, writer and photographer for The Warner Weekly, a publication for the American military community in Bamberg, Germany.
Ashley is a board member at a Catholic homeschool cooperative in Virginia. She homeschools her four incredible children along with her brilliant engineer/scientist husband.
