On February 18, 2026, Federal Judge Landya McCafferty of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire issued a final ruling permanently invalidating the Trump administration's directive requiring public K-12 schools and colleges to end diversity, equity, and inclusion programs or risk losing federal funding. The ruling came after the federal government conceded that the directive and its associated certification requirement should be vacated, resulting in a court order preventing the government from enforcing, relying on, or reviving the policy anywhere nationwide.
The case was brought by the ACLU and its New Hampshire and Massachusetts branches, along with the National Education Association, NEA-New Hampshire, and the Center for Black Educator Development. The lawsuit challenged the Department of Education's "Dear Colleague Letter" issued in April 2025, which had threatened to withhold millions in federal funding from schools maintaining diversity programs.
The ruling followed the Trump administration's decision in January 2026 to drop its appeal of a separate federal court ruling in Maryland, where a judge found the Dear Colleague Letter violated educators' First Amendment rights. ACLU Legal Director Gilles Bissonnette stated: "That's why cases like these are just so, so critical to force the government to prove and demonstrate the necessity for why they're doing what they're doing."
While the permanent injunction represented a significant legal victory for civil rights and educational organizations, the practical damage was already substantial. During the months the directive was in effect, universities and school districts across the country had preemptively dismantled DEI offices, cancelled diversity-related programming, and eliminated equity-focused staff positions. The chilling effect of the federal funding threat -- combined with the vagueness of what constituted prohibited "DEI" activity -- had driven overcompliance that the court ruling could not easily reverse.