FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
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Hundreds of millions in federal financial assistance at risk in
Maryland
BALTIMORE, MD – Attorney General Anthony G. Brown today, as part of a
coalition of 19 attorneys general, filed a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Department of Education’s
threat to withhold federal funding from state and local agencies that refuse to abandon lawful
programs and policies that promote equal access to education in K-12 classrooms across the
nation.
On April 3, 2025, the Department of Education (ED) informed state and local agencies that they
must accept the Trump administration’s new and legally incoherent interpretation of Title VI of
the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with respect to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts – or else risk
immediate and catastrophic loss of federal education funds. Maryland, like many other states,
refused to submit to the ED’s vague, contradictory, and unsupported interpretation of Title VI. In
filing today’s lawsuit, Attorney General Brown and the coalition seek to bar the ED from
withholding any funding based on these unlawful conditions.
“With these blatantly unlawful actions, the Trump Administration is playing politics with
children’s futures, threatening to defund schools just because they promote policies that ensure
equal education for all students,” said Attorney General Brown. “Maryland will not stand by
while President Trump tries to bully our State with vague, contradictory demands that would hurt
our most vulnerable students and violate the law we've followed for decades.”
The U.S. Department of Education provides Maryland with hundreds of millions in
congressionally mandated financial support each year for a wide variety of needs and services
related to children and education. This funding includes financial support to ensure that students
from low-income families have the same access to high-quality education as their peers, provide
special education services, recruit and train highly skilled and dedicated teachers, fund
programming for non-native speakers to learn English, and provide support to vulnerable
children in foster care and without housing. As a condition of receiving these funds, state and
local education agencies provide written assurances they will comply with Title VI of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color or national origin, and
Maryland has consistently and regularly certified its compliance with Title VI and its
implementing regulations.
However, on April 3, the ED issued a letter that conditioned continued federal financial
assistance on state and local education agencies certifying that they are not operating programs
inconsistent with the Trump administration’s view that efforts supporting diversity, equity, and
inclusion are unlawful. The letter forced state and local agencies to choose between two
untenable options: (1) refuse to certify compliance based on the ED’s un-defined viewpoint on
what constitutes unlawful diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, curriculum, instruction, and
policies, and place federal funding in peril or (2) certify compliance, attempt to identify and
eliminate lawful diversity, equity, and inclusion to the detriment of students, and still face
liability for failing to fully comply with the ED’s vague and ill-defined order. Faced with this
choice, Maryland provided the ED with written certifications making it clear that Maryland and
its local partners fully comply with Title VI and its lawfully issued implementing regulations, but
it informed the ED that Maryland would not assent to its additional, unlawful demands.
In the lawsuit, Attorney General Brown and the multistate coalition assert that the ED’s attempt
to terminate federal education funding based on its misinterpretation of Title VI violates the
Spending Clause, the Appropriations Clause, the separation of powers, and the Administrative
Procedure Act.
In filing the lawsuit, Attorney General Brown joins the attorneys general of California, Colorado,
Connecticut, Delaware, Hawai‛i, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey,
New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin, and
Washington.
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