DEI Grant Termination Campaign Loses Again in Court — $600M Teacher-Training Cuts Struck Down — Even as DOJ Waits on SCOTUS in Thakur
The Trump administration's campaign to terminate grants it ties to DEI suffered its latest judicial defeat on Thursday, September 17, 2026, when a federal judge struck down the Education Department's anti-DEI grant policy, blocking the department from cutting money to teacher-training programs it had characterized as promoting "divisive ideologies."
The case: in February 2025, the Education Department canceled more than $600 million in grants for teacher training, saying they were "used to train teachers and education agencies on 'divisive ideologies,' including DEI and social justice activism." A multi-state coalition — including California, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland and Massachusetts — sued. The judge, in a 70-page ruling, found the administration acted hastily and failed to follow legal requirements requiring notice and an opportunity for public comment before the cuts1.
This lands alongside the administration's escalation to the Supreme Court in the parallel research-grant fight. In Thakur v. Trump, the Ninth Circuit (No. 25-4249) ruled against the government — holding that the Supreme Court's recent NIH decision compelled that result — after the district court provisionally certified two classes of UC researchers whose grants were terminated, including a "Form Termination Class" terminated by form letter without grant-specific explanations and a DEI-termination class. The DOJ has petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn the injunction blocking DEI-based research grant terminations; the Court has not yet announced action on the petition.
What it signals: the pattern through 2026 is consistent — district and appellate courts keep rejecting DEI-linked grant terminations, mostly on procedural grounds (arbitrary action, skipped notice-and-comment), while the administration keeps re-filing the same campaign one venue up. The Education Department ruling is another data point that the terminations fail even under deferential administrative-law review; the Thakur cert petition will test whether the Supreme Court changes that equation.
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An instance of Executive policy shifts cannot justify retroactively terminating approved federal grants. — The $600 million in cuts were retroactive terminations of awarded grants for ideological reasons, undone on procedural grounds. ↩︎