A federal judge ruled Thursday that the Education Department acted unlawfully when it adopted a directive used to terminate more than $600 million in teacher-training grants over diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, finding that the policy lacked clear standards and failed to account for its consequences.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
BOSTON — A federal judge on Thursday invalidated a Trump administration policy that led the Department of Education to cancel more than $600 million in federal teacher-training grants over diversity, equity and inclusion programs, ruling that the directive violated federal administrative law.
U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley ruled for eight Democrat-led states challenging the February 2025 directive, concluding that the department had not established sufficiently clear criteria for determining which programs would be classified as DEI initiatives and lose federal funding.
Kelley also found that the department failed to adequately consider how terminating the grants would affect universities, teacher-training programs and educators who had relied on the previously awarded money.
“The Directive does not acknowledge the fact that thousands of teachers, as well as teachers in teacher-training pipelines, would be affected, upending the careers of much-needed educators,” Kelley wrote.
The ruling concerns the legality of the department’s original policy under the Administrative Procedure Act rather than immediately ordering repayment of every canceled grant.
Kelley concluded that the February 2025 directive was “arbitrary and capricious,” a legal standard used when courts determine that an agency failed to sufficiently explain or consider the consequences of its actions. Claims seeking recovery of money from individual terminated grants must proceed separately in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, according to the ruling.
The dispute began shortly after the Education Department directed personnel in February 2025 to review existing grants and identify programs the administration believed supported discriminatory practices or conflicted with its policy priorities.
Within days, the department began sending termination notices to recipients of grants issued through the Teacher Quality Partnership and Supporting Effective Educator Development programs.
The government ultimately terminated more than 90 percent of grants awarded through the two programs, according to Thursday’s ruling. The cancellations involved 109 grants overall, including 40 awarded to universities and other institutions in the eight states challenging the directive.
The Education Department said at the time that more than $600 million in taxpayer-supported grants were funding teacher-training programs involving subjects it considered outside the proper scope of federal education policy.
The department identified Critical Race Theory, DEI, social justice activism, “anti-racism,” “white privilege and white supremacy” among what it characterized as “inappropriate and unnecessary topics.”
Officials also argued that some grant programs used teacher and staff recruitment strategies that were “implicitly and explicitly based on race.”
The eight states challenging the policy are California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, New York and Wisconsin.
Their lawsuit previously produced a separate ruling requiring the federal government to restore the canceled funding.
That order did not remain in effect.
On April 4, 2025, the Supreme Court allowed the administration to continue withholding the grant money while litigation proceeded. The justices said the government was likely to succeed in showing that the district court lacked jurisdiction to order the payment of grant funds and noted that parties seeking wrongly withheld money could pursue claims in the appropriate court.
The Supreme Court’s decision did not determine whether the Education Department’s underlying anti-DEI directive complied with the Administrative Procedure Act.
That distinction became central to the case before Kelley.
Thursday’s ruling leaves monetary disputes arising from individual grant cancellations for the Court of Federal Claims while permitting Kelley to decide whether the department lawfully created the policy that caused those cancellations.
She concluded that it did not.
The dispute developed as the Trump administration was moving across federal agencies to eliminate programs incorporating diversity, equity and inclusion considerations.
In a January 2025 executive order, President Donald Trump directed federal agencies to end programs the administration described as providing unlawful preferences or discrimination based on race or sex.
Speaking that month at the World Economic Forum, Trump said his administration was moving to abolish “all discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion nonsense” and said he wanted the United States to become a “merit-based country.”
Trump reiterated the administration’s position during his Feb. 24 State of the Union address, declaring, “We ended DEI in America.”
The Education Department’s February directive applied that broader policy to federal education grants already awarded to institutions involved in teacher preparation and professional development.
Under the Teacher Quality Partnership program, federal law authorizes competitive grants to partnerships that train prospective and new teachers, provide professional development and support educators serving high-need schools.
The Supporting Effective Educator Development program similarly provides federal funding for teacher and school-leader preparation and development.
The administration maintained that it had authority to stop supporting programs it concluded were inconsistent with federal civil rights law or its policy priorities.
The states argued that the department could not terminate previously awarded grants through a broadly worded directive without explaining what conduct would trigger cancellation or evaluating the disruption caused to programs already operating with federal funding.
Kelley accepted that argument under the Administrative Procedure Act.
Her ruling does not prevent the Trump administration from pursuing its broader policy of removing DEI considerations from federal programs. It invalidates the specific Education Department directive used to terminate these teacher-training grants because of how the agency developed and applied it.
The Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment following Thursday’s decision.
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