The status of litigation against the Trump administration’s K-12 education agenda: A guide for education leaders

Since January 2025, the Trump administration has actively worked to reshape the federal role in K-12 education. This includes executive orders directing the dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education (ED), threatening to withhold federal funding from schools that support DEI (or DEIA) or recognize transgender students’ rights, and calling for the return to so-called “common-sense” school discipline policies. This is unfolding amid the implementation of the administration’s efforts, sure to create untold harms, to shrink the size of the federal government (including ED).

Given the limited role of the federal government in education, many of these actions exceed the executive’s authority to dictate state and local K-12 school policy. As a result, several of them have been challenged in federal courts. While most of these cases are working their way through lengthy litigation processes, federal judges across the country have issued preliminary injunctions to temporarily stop the administration’s actions. As our new K-12 education litigation tracker (and this brief) shows, this means that the Trump administration has been limited in its ability to lawfully “enforce” significant portions of its radical K-12 education agenda.

As the federal policy landscape is quickly evolving, it is vital that state and local education leaders across the country have access to up-to-date information on the status of the administration’s actions. In response to the need for timely and accurate information, this brief provides an overview of the ongoing legal challenges (as of September 1, 2025) to the Trump administration’s executive actions related to K-12 education. We highlight the status of ongoing litigation using information from a new litigation tracker data tool (which will be updated monthly until these legal challenges resolve) and briefly summarize each executive action and the federal lawsuits challenging them.

We have seen a wave of executive orders aimed at changing federal K-12 education policy since the second Trump administration took office in January. These reach far beyond existing federal education law. Table 1 summarizes the administration’s most consequential executive actions on K-12 education, the lawsuits challenging those actions, and the status of ongoing litigation.¹

Status: Varies by case. Enforcement temporarily blocked in part (preliminary injunction granted); Appeal filed by the federal government. 

Executive Order 14151: Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing, issued on Trump’s first day in office, calls for the termination of all “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI), “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” (DEIA), and “environmental justice” related work across the federal government, including ending:

1. All DEI, DEIA, and/or environmental justice offices and positions in federal agencies;
2. Any performance requirements related to DEI, DEIA, and/or environmental justice for federal workers, contractors, and grantees;
3. All equity action plans, equity actions, initiatives, or programs, and equity-related grants or contracts.

Notably, the order does not define the terms “DEI,” “DEIA,” “environmental justice,” “equity,” or “equity-related.” Nor does it provide any examples of specific types of work or programs that it aims to target. The EO has been used as justification to shutter agency offices and to terminate federal grants that are ostensibly “equity-focused.”

How does this EO impact students, families, and school districts? The most immediate impact of this EO in K-12 education has been felt through grant cancellations justified as necessary to comply with the directive. This includes, as one example, the cancellations of $600 million in federal grants to support teacher workforce development. A number of legal challenges have been filed in response to EO 14151, including at least four in response to the impact the EO has had on K-12 education.

More broadly, this EO, along with other executive actions attacking DEI and civil rights, may weaken public schools’ efforts to promote diverse, inclusive, and equitable educational environments (initiatives that were often born out of institutions’ legal obligations to avoid discriminatory practices and policies) and to teach about U.S. history and current events. We know from prior surveys, for example, that state censorship laws had a chilling effect on educators’ speech and instruction as many teachers preemptively complied with broad state directives to limit the teaching of so-called “critical race theory.” This EO, along with others discussed below, may have a similar effect on public schools regardless of how it is leveraged by the administration.

Status: Litigation ongoing. Motion to dismiss filed by the federal government.

Executive Order 14190: Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling directs the education secretary and other cabinet members to develop a strategy to terminate federal funding for schools and educational programs that support the “promotion of gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology” and/or support the social transition of transgender students.

The executive order defines “discriminatory equity ideology” as one that endorses “treating individuals as members of preferred or disfavored groups, rather than as individuals, and minimizes agency, merit, and capability in favor of immoral generalizations.” Based on the examples provided in the order, this would include exposing students to concepts such as white supremacy, systemic racism, implicit bias, and privilege. Here, we note that threatening to withhold federal funding for local school curriculum decisions is expressly prohibited by current federal education law.

The order defines “social transition” as the process of adopting a “gender identity” or “gender marker” that differs from a person’s sex. This provision would significantly undermine local schools’ efforts to promote inclusive school environments for transgender youth by limiting the following activities:

• Educator and school staff use of transgender students’ preferred gender, name, and pronouns
• Access to bathrooms and locker rooms that match students’ gender identity
• Participation in school sports programs that match students’ gender identity
• Teaching students about gender identity

Finally, the order reestablishes the President’s 1776 Commission to promote patriotic education and mandates that federally funded educational institutions organize programming about the U.S. Constitution.

How does this EO impact students, families, and school districts? To date, EO 14190 has led to significant changes to school curriculum, programs, and resources in public schools managed by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). A group of students (represented by the ACLU) are suing the DoD in response to these changes which included removing “materials about slavery, Native American history, LGBTQ identities and history, and preventing sexual harassment and abuse, as well as portions of the Advanced Placement Psychology curriculum.” EO 14190, alongside EO 14151, has also been used to justify the cancellation of millions of dollars in federal grants issued by ED.

Like EO 14151, this EO has the potential to have much broader significance for public schools given the breadth of ongoing attacks against DEI and civil rights, including the rights of transgender youth. This EO, for example, may also serve to chill educators’ speech or lead to changes in instruction and school programming through preemptive compliance on the part of school leaders or board members. These types of responses would have negative consequences for the health of the U.S. public education system and the students and families that rely on it.

Status: Declared unlawful and vacated in a summary judgment.

On Feb. 14, 2025, the U.S. Department of Education issued nonbinding guidance in the form of a “Dear Colleague” letter (DCL) that aimed to clarify schools’ and colleges’ obligations under federal civil rights law to avoid racial discrimination in education policy and practice. The DCL declared, without the authority to do so, that any race-conscious policies, programs or initiatives (e.g., DEI programs) would be considered illegal racial discrimination under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The guidance letter gave education institutions 14 days to comply.

Following the letter’s publication, the administration took additional steps to enforce their new definition of illegal racial discrimination. This included issuing a document entitled, “Frequently Asked Questions About Racial Preferences and Stereotypes Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act,” which elaborated on the department’s (dubious) legal rationale and outlined additional details on their enforcement plans.

In April, ED took the additional step of issuing a new certification requirement to state and local education agencies that asked them to confirm their compliance with the Trump administration’s new interpretation of anti-racial discrimination law. This would prohibit DEI programs as a condition of receiving federal funding.

Nineteen states, led by the state of New York, subsequently sued the Trump administration in response to the certification requirement arguing that the administration is exceeding its constitutional authority and relying on a “misinterpretation” of Title VI.² There have been three other lawsuits related to the DCL and certification requirements—including two from the country’s largest teachers’ unions (the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association) and one from the NAACP.

How does this executive action impact students, families, and school districts? In August, a federal judge issued a summary judgment declaring the guidance letter and the certification requirement unlawful and vacated. As of Sept. 1, 2025, the federal government has not appealed the district court’s ruling.

The states that refused to sign the new certification requirement risked losing their federal education funding. Even though federal courts previously blocked the administration from enforcing the DCL and its requirements, at least 21 states confirmed their intention to comply with the administration’s directives as litigation was ongoing. Students, families, and school districts in these states may still face negative consequences associated with rolling back DEI efforts and other equity-oriented policies and programs given their state leaders’ expressed interest in preemptive compliance with the Trump administration’s orientation toward DEI and civil rights.

Status: A Supreme Court decision has allowed the federal government to resume enforcement, pending the federal government’s appeal (preliminary injunction stayed).

Executive Order 14242: Improving Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities, directs the education secretary to facilitate the dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education with the goal of “return[ing] all authority over education to states and local communities, while ensuring that existing services, programs, and benefits remain uninterrupted.” The order also calls for the education secretary to ensure that all federally funded schools and institutions are following previous executive directives— specifically, that they are not promoting DEI and/or “gender ideology.” (The president does not have the authority to dismantle a federal agency that was created by an act of Congress.)

How does this EO impact students, families, and school districts? EO 14242 was issued shortly after ED announced a reduction in its workforce (RIF). The RIF resulted in nearly half of the department’s staff being placed on administrative leave beginning March 21, 2025. A core question of the legal challenges to this EO and the related RIF has focused on whether ED can still carry out its congressionally mandated functions with only half its staff. The Trump administration claims that it can, though there is already evidence to the contrary.

Federal courts initially issued a preliminary injunction preventing the Trump administration from carrying out its plans to dismantle ED and calling for previously laid off federal workers to be rehired. However, in July 2025, the Supreme Court paused the lower court’s preliminary injunction using the emergency docket (meaning no formal opinions explaining their rationale were issued, though Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a dissent that was joined by the two other liberal justices). This means the Trump administration can move forward with firing department staff while the cases proceed through the federal courts.

The shrinking of the federal education department, and its potential closure, will have significant consequences for the K-12 public education system—given the important role US ED plays in disbursing critical education funding, monitoring compliance with civil rights laws, and tackling emerging issues in education policy, among other key functions.

Status: No lawsuits filed.

Executive Order 14280: Reinstating Commonsense School Discipline Policies directs the education secretary and other cabinet members to issue new guidance to clarify K-12 public schools’ obligations to avoid racial discrimination in the application of school discipline under federal civil rights law. Importantly, the order proposes a definition of racial discrimination that is inconsistent with existing federal law. Like the Feb. 14 DCL, the order defines any race-conscious or equity-based approach to remedy racial inequality as illegal racial discrimination (which is contrary to how racial discrimination is defined in the Title VI regulations). In the case of school discipline, EO 14280 claims that any efforts to address racial disparities in discipline amount to racial discrimination.

The order also directs administration officials to release a report analyzing the status of “discriminatory equity ideology”-based school discipline and “behavior modification techniques” in public education. “Discriminatory equity ideology” is defined using the same language as EO 14190 and “behavior modification techniques” is defined as school discipline policies or practices that incorporate or are based on “discriminatory equity ideology.”

The order misrepresents education research and is vague on details. It does not name any specific types of school discipline programs or practices, nor does it provide any examples of what “common sense” discipline might entail.

Importantly, EO 14280 was released alongside EO 14281, which called for an end to the use of “disparate impact analysis,” an approach to assessing civil rights violations under Title VI which aims to consider whether a racially neutral policy or practice disproportionately impacts different racial/ethnic groups (which is permissible under the relevant federal regulations). Disparate impact analysis has been an important tool to address racially discriminatory school discipline policies during previous administrations.

How does this EO impact students, families, and school districts? EOs 14280 and 14281, taken together, undermine local efforts to remedy unfair school discipline practices and policies that produce consequential racial disparities, as well as the federal capacity to address discriminatory school discipline policies.

Whether the Trump administration’s unconstitutional attempts to reshape the federal K-12 role will be successful remains to be seen. Over the last eight months, the Trump administration has worked to mold state and local education policy and practice to comport, it seems, with the far right’s broader white Christian nationalist agenda. While framed by the president as benefiting K-12 students and returning authority over education back to the states, the reality is that each of these EOs has limited (or will limit) students’ right to access public education. They also represent an attempt to significantly expand the federal role in education into areas of school practice that have long been the purview of state and local leaders.

Despite the administration’s ambitions, it has little to no authority to enact much of what it has proposed. As a result, litigation has become a key tool to protect state control of education and deliver high-quality free and accessible public K-12 education. Across the various lawsuits that have been filed since January, plaintiffs have raised a number of concerns, including that the administration’s actions:

• Exceed the scope of the president’s constitutional authority
• Were issued without following legally required administrative procedures
• Have led to the illegal impoundment of congressionally appropriated funding
• Infringe on plaintiffs’ constitutional rights, including freedom of speech and due process

In some ways, the implementation of these executive orders has paused as federal courts step in. Still, the administration is not letting up on its attacks on DEI and other local efforts to promote equity and inclusion in education policy and practice. In July 2025, for example, the U.S. Department of Justice released a memo declaring DEI practices unlawful under federal civil rights law—echoing many of the same arguments in the Feb. 14 DCL (despite the preliminary injunction on the DCL). The administration has also continued to escalate its attacks against the rights of transgender students, largely by weaponizing Title IX—the federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination—through the ED’s Office for Civil Rights.

The Trump agenda for K-12 education seeks to undermine decades of federal, state, and local efforts to improve public schools and promote equity, inclusion, and accessibility in public education. The federal courts will play an important role in determining the administration’s ultimate success.