Attorney General Mark Brnovich announced his leadership of a coalition of 15 states who urge the Biden Administration not to reinstate a 2014 discipline policy that the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) believes would bring race-based decision-making into school discipline.
The attorneys general in the coalition submitted an official comment to the U.S. Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, opposing the reinstatement of the “Dear Colleague” letter, which was written by the Department of Education (ED) under the Obama Administration. They instead asked him to continue allowing schools to determine their own discipline policies.
In the “Dear Colleague” letter, the ED said they would investigate student discipline policies and practices at particular schools based on complaints about possible racial discrimination in student discipline. The letter read that their guidance would “help public elementary and secondary schools administer student discipline in a manner that does not discriminate on the basis of race.”
The letter observed that “intentionally disciplining students differently based on race” was a violation of federal law, specifically Title IV and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It also held that even if a school’s discipline policy did not discuss race and even if that policy was applied to students without regard to their race, the policy was still liable to be a violation of federal law if it had a “disparate impact, i.e., a disproportionate and unjustified effect on students of a particular race.” The letter said that the United States would seek “redress in court” against violators of the letter, potentially leading to the school losing its federal funding.
In 2018, the Trump administration ended the “Dear Colleague” letter policies. An activism group called Educators for Excellence wrote the former president a letter expressing their opposition to the letter’s rescission.
“The federal government has an important role to play in upholding students’ civil rights and can do so without stifling important local autonomy,” they wrote.
Supporters of former President Donald Trump’s rescission of the letter praised the president for minimizing government involvement in the classroom. Brnovich warned against President Joe Biden’s plan to reinstate the policies, listing several “destructive effects” of the letter.
The AGO’s press release provided quotes from three U.S. teachers about their experiences with “Dear Colleague” letter policies.
In Louisiana, a teacher said, “At the beginning of the year, a student assaulted a teacher in broad daylight in a hallway of our school….He was back the next day.”
Oklahoma City teachers said that they “were told that referrals would not require suspension unless there was blood,” according to the AGO.
Brnovich wrote that policies that require school districts to include a disparate impact standard violate both the Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act.
“The Biden Administration is attempting to tie the hands of local schools and prohibit teachers from keeping classrooms safe,” he said.
Elizabeth Troutman | The Center Square contributor
