‘The audacity … is truly breathtaking’: Judge slams Trump DOE for axing grant supporting desegregation in the South and orders ‘immediate’ reinstatement

A national justice successful Washington, D.C., tore into the Trump administration connected Wednesday portion ordering the “immediate” reinstatement of a assistance that the Department of Education chose to ax earlier this year, which supports desegregation efforts successful the South.

“In presumption of the past of contention successful America and the ngo of [plaintiff Southern Education Fund] since the Civil War, the audacity of terminating its grants based connected ‘DEI’ concerns is genuinely breathtaking,” wrote U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman successful a 37-page opinion.

The Bill Clinton appointee ruled successful favour of granting a preliminary injunction for the Southern Education Foundation (SEF), which sued the Trump medication aft it abruptly terminated the group’s Equity Assistance Center programme assistance connected Feb. 13 done executive orders. Friedman directed the authorities to reinstate the assistance and reimburse SEF “for each outstanding expenses” aft determining that the DOE’s termination “likely violated national law,” according to a Thursday press release from SEF.

“The Court finds that SEF has sufficiently demonstrated that it volition endure irreparable harm due to the fact that the defendants’ actions endanger the livelihoods of SEF’s employees, its nonrecreational reputation, and the precise beingness of its programs,” Friedman said.

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The EAC grant, according to SEF officials, enables the instauration to run its Equity Assistance Center-South (EAC-South) program, which provides method assistance to nationalist schoolhouse districts and authorities agencies crossed 11 Southern states, supporting their compliance with national civilian rights laws. The programme is portion of a web of Equity Assistance Centers, formerly known arsenic Desegregation Assistance Centers, that was primitively established to assistance schoolhouse systems successful dismantling radical segregation.

“Today, 70 years later, determination are inactive 132 unfastened national schoolhouse desegregation cases,” Friedman said. “An overwhelming 130 of those cases are concentrated successful states located successful the South.”

Friedman cited the landmark lawsuit of Brown v. Board of Education successful his ruling, successful which the Supreme Court held that radical segregation successful nationalist acquisition was unconstitutional and ordered its elimination “with each deliberate speed.” He said the determination to dump the EAC-South assistance “contravenes the precise rule of ‘deliberate speed'” mandated by the precocious court. Friedman quoted the court’s ruling successful the lawsuit directly, noting however “Brown ne'er contemplated that the conception of ‘deliberate speed’ would countenance indefinite hold successful elimination of radical barriers successful schools.”

“Nor did President Eisenhower and the courageous judges successful the South who interpreted Brown,” Friedman said. “They could hardly person imagined that immoderate aboriginal Presidential Administration would hinder efforts by organizations similar SEF — based connected immoderate misguided knowing of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ — to fulfill Brown’s law committedness to students crossed the state to eradicate the signifier of radical segregation.”

SEF officials praised Friedman’s ruling, saying successful a property merchandise Thursday that “with this order, the tribunal takes a basal for the regularisation of instrumentality … and for the prohibition against radical segregation arsenic congressionally enacted by the 1964 Civil Rights Act.”

“This determination represents an important measurement toward protecting what ne'er should beryllium nether menace — national enactment for adjacent acquisition accidental careless of race,” said SEF President and CEO Raymond Pierce. “This enactment is not controversial. It’s constitutional. When the much than 130 progressive schoolhouse desegregation tribunal orders crossed the South person been afloat resolved, and each students bask the afloat acquisition opportunities guaranteed nether national law, SEF volition beryllium the archetypal to suggest closing retired this grant. Until then, we question to proceed to uphold the Supreme Court’s determination successful Brown by providing method assistance to schools done the EAC-South.”