Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

11. Department of Education · Minor

Ban compelled speech in federally controlled schools

Partially done

342 11. Department of Education

“Federal officials should protect educators and students in jurisdictions under federal control from racial discrimination by reinforcing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and prohibiting compelled speech.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    With the letter enjoined, the Department did the same work by rule instead: it amended its Title VI regulations to eliminate disparate-impact liability, and the day before rescinded the 1979 vocational-education civil rights guidelines. Both are in force and neither is enjoined, so the Civil Rights Act half of the ask is delivered by regulation for every recipient including federally controlled schools. The compelled-speech half is not: no order, rule or guidance in the window prohibits compelled speech in any school.

  2. Blocked

    And the vacatur became final on the government's own consent, which is why the New Hampshire case ended. The government's Fourth Circuit appeal in *AFT* (No. 25-2228) was dismissed on 2026-01-22 on its own unopposed Rule 42(b) motion to dismiss voluntarily. On 2026-02-03 the parties in *Nat'l Educ. Ass'n v. Dep't of Education* stipulated that the four challenged agency actions — the February 14 Dear Colleague Letter, the February 28 / April 9 FAQ, the EndDEI Portal launched February 27, and the April 3 certification demand — "have been vacated and set aside by the final judgment entered in" AFT, that "the vacatur and terms of the judgment in AFT apply to Plaintiffs", that they "will not be relied on in any way by Defendants including by way of seeking to enforce its substance through ED or DOJ civil rights enforcement procedures", and that "the certification demand issued on April 3, 2025 will not be reinstated in substance even if under a different name". ED retains only its ordinary Title VI enforcement authority. The complaint was dismissed without prejudice on those terms on 2026-02-18 and judgment entered 2026-02-23. So the D.N.H. case was not dissolved, vacated as moot, or made permanent — the three possibilities the read queue offered; it ended because the same actions were vacated nationwide elsewhere and the government agreed not to revive them.

  3. Blocked

    The injunction was never dissolved; the instruments it reached were destroyed outright in another court. On 2025-08-14 the District of Maryland entered judgment for the plaintiffs in *American Federation of Teachers v. U.S. Department of Education*, No. 1:25-cv-00628, on Counts One, Two, Three, Five and Six, and ordered that "the Dear Colleague Letter of February 14, 2025 is VACATED under 5 U.S.C. § 706" and that "The Reminder of Legal Obligations Undertaken In Exchange for Receiving Federal Financial Assistance and Request for Certification under Title VI and SFFA v. Harvard" — the April 3, 2025 certification demand — "is VACATED under 5 U.S.C. § 706". That is a nationwide vacatur of the instrument this item's `attempted` event rests on.

  4. Blocked

    The District of New Hampshire enjoined the Department from enforcing or implementing the February 14 letter, the associated FAQs, the End DEI Portal and the April 3 certification requirement as against the National Education Association, its members and anyone who employs or works with them (Nat'l Educ. Ass'n v. U.S. Dep't of Education, No. 25-cv-091-LM). OCR responded that it would take no enforcement action under any of them until further notice. The Evidence is the Department's own letter, which now carries that notice in its header; the docket itself is not readable on an allowlisted source.

  5. Attempted

    The Office for Civil Rights issued a Dear Colleague Letter telling every institution receiving federal funds — federally run schools included — that Title VI forbids using race in admissions, hiring, discipline and “administrative support”, and naming “compelling speech in the form of ‘diversity statements’ and other loyalty tests” as part of the same regime. It reinforces the Civil Rights Act; it stops short of prohibiting compelled speech, calling the end of race preferences “an important first step” toward that.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • One negative search covered this ask and #860 and #861.
  • Federal Register full text, quoted phrase “compelled speech”, all types, 2025-01-20 onward: 4 documents — a FERC transmission rule, an FCC transparency rule, an OPM civil service rule, and OMB/ED’s proposed Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance (FR 2026-10817), which uses the phrase only to say the grants rule must not itself compel speech. None is about schools.
  • Resolved on 2026-09-03. The docket is no longer a lead: the free court filings behind D.N.H. 1:25-cv-00091, D. Md. 1:25-cv-00628 and 4th Cir. 25-2228 can be opened from CourtListener’s document store. The Judgment and the parties’ Joint Motion with their stipulation (ECF 99 and 100), the D. Md. Order of Judgment (ECF 84) and the Fourth Circuit’s dismissal order (ECF 27) were all read in full.
  • One correction to the earlier finding. The D. Md. Order of Judgment names two documents as vacated on its face — the February 14 Dear Colleague Letter and the “Reminder of Legal Obligations … and Request for Certification” — and denies relief on Count Four. It is the parties’ D.N.H. stipulation that treats all four challenged actions (adding the FAQ and the EndDEI Portal) as “vacated and set aside by the final judgment entered in AFT”. Both facts are recorded above in the events they belong to; neither is stated as the other.
  • The same chain of orders bears on #860 and #861, whose blocked or attempted events rest on the same February and April 2025 instruments.
Action
restrict
Object
Compelled speech in federally controlled schools
ID
859