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FIRST ON FOX: Dozens of parental rights organizations have signed onto a letter sent to all 50 states calling for top-to-bottom statewide audits of education laws and policies warning that DEI, poor hiring practices, and discrimination based on sex and gender continues to be prevalent in K-12 schools nationwide.
The letter, sent by Defending Education along with over 20 other parental rights in education groups, urges leaders in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., to repeal or revise any provisions that allow race or sex-based preferences in hiring and programming, violate titles VI, VII, or IX of the Civil Rights Act or Equal Protection Clause, and undermine student safety with poor vetting in hiring practices.
“It has become common practice for states to violate federal law in the name of diversity,” Erika Sanzi, senior director of communications at Defending Education, told Fox News Digital.
“With so many ideological bullies in state government and in our schools, cowardice and ignorance have ruled the day for far too long. State laws, regulations and practices that promote (and even require) race and sex-based discrimination must be exposed and eliminated. It’s time that every state cleans up the mess they’ve made in the name of DEI.”
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Teacher vetting is a top concern voiced in the letter, specifically the resignation of Des Moines, Iowa, Superintendent Ian Roberts after he was detained last month by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) following a brief car chase. He was taken into custody because he had “a final order of removal and no work authorization,” authorities said at the time.
Roberts entered the United States illegally from Guyana and was not legally authorized to work in the U.S. after his employment authorization card expired in 2020.
Homeland Security officials said that Roberts faced weapon possession charges from Feb. 5, 2020, and was given a final order of removal by an immigration judge in May 2024. After his arrest, authorities said they found a loaded handgun in his vehicle.
Additionally, numerous examples of teachers being accused of sexually abusing children have been reported in recent years. The letter states that “a public school employee who sexually abuses children is, on average, passed to three school districts and can abuse up to 73 children before they are fired or face legal consequences.”
“Collective bargaining agreements negotiated between teacher unions and school districts are a key contributor to the problem, as they often allow for scrubbing of personnel files, so no record of abuse is left once an offender leaves the system,” the letter says. “This widespread lack of transparency in educational employment is staggering and unacceptable.”
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Some of the groups signed onto the letter include School Boards for Academic Excellence, Parents Unite, Protective Parent Coalition, Conservative Ladies of America, Awake Illinois, Power2Parent, and Californians for Equal Rights Foundation.
The Trump administration has taken efforts to roll back DEI practices across the board, including with an executive order combating the practice in the federal government, in the military, and in schools.
As a result, Fox News Digital has reported on several examples of companies and schools failing to eliminate their DEI programs, but instead rebranding them using different terminology and moving DEI employees to other departments.
“It is the exact same toxic nonsense under a new wrapper, and they’re just hoping to extend the grift, because a lot of these people, I would say most of the people, working in DEI are useless,” Consumers’ Research Executive Director Will Hild told Fox News Digital earlier this year.
“At first, they just pushed back on, tried to defend DEI itself, but when that became so obvious that what DEI really was was anti-White, anti-Asian, sometimes anti-Jewish discrimination in hiring and promotion, they abandoned that. Now what they’re trying to do is simply change the terminology that has become so toxic to their brand. So we’re seeing a lot of companies move from having departments of DEI, for example, to ‘departments of belonging’ or ‘departments of inclusivity.’”
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Additionally, Defending Education warns that many current state laws are not in line with federal guidance.
Sarah Parshall Perry, vice president and legal fellow at Defending Education, told Fox News Digital, “Our assessment of state education laws coast-to-coast reveals a troubling reality: many state laws are at odds with federal anti-discrimination provisions and are going to invite federal scrutiny. State laws like those in Iowa, Illinois, and Maine demand race and sex-based preferencing in everything from programs to sports, scholarships to employment.”
“The Civil Rights Act’s mandates of equality in educational programs aren’t being realized in too many American classrooms, and the duty to secure those promises lies with the state leaders tasked with passing and enforcing state laws. It’s time for states to clean house — because at bottom, education is, and always has been, a state proposition.”
Over the last several years, a few dozen DEI consultant groups have racked up over a hundred million dollars in taxpayer-funded contracts from K-12 schools across the country, according to a report from Defending Education earlier this year, first reported by Fox News Digital.
In total, the groups collected over $123 million from public schools in 40 states. The report found public school DEI contracts in both red and blue states, from Florida and Alabama to California and Washington.
“Public education is a state responsibility,” Defending Education wrote in a press release, along with links to the letters sent to each individual state.
“Yet every state that accepts federal funds must follow federal civil rights law. Too many states are out of compliance, whether through race-based hiring and programming, restroom/locker room and athletic policies that violate sex equality or the scrubbing of personnel records that allow predators to move between schools undetected. Our organizations are calling for ‘legal housekeeping’ to ensure that schools operate lawfully, transparently, and in the best interests of students and families.”
Fox News Digital’s Peter Pinedo contributed to this report.
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