Legal foundation sues Education Department for information on alleged civil rights violations

The Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF) sued the Department of Education on Tuesday, for failing to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request on documents related to alleged civil rights violations in Chicago.

The Education Department in 2021 found that school district 65 had violated section four of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but later withdrew the findings in the days after President Joe Biden took office.

The foundation is accusing the Education Department of not complying with a FOIA request made two years ago, pertaining to documents related to the department’s failure to hold the school district accountable for the Civil Rights Act violations.

“The American people have a right to know what  their government is doing and why the Biden Administration is allowing racial segregation to  continue despite clearly violating the law,” Executive Director Kimberly Hermann said in a statement shared with Just the News. “The Biden Administration’s withdrawal of findings is completely unprecedented. Not only did withdrawing the letter signal that it is okay to discriminate  based on race in schools, but without more clarity about what happened to the letter, we will never know how to prevent something like this from happening again in the future.” 

The district, referred to as “Evanston/Skokie District 65,” allegedly segregated staff based on skin color during trainings and staff meetings in 2019, by separating them into white and non-white groups. It has also instituted a discipline policy that tells staff members to take race into account when punishing students, and made white students participate in a “privilege” walk.

The SLF previously filed a lawsuit against the school district in 2021 on behalf of a school teacher in the district in order to “stop District 65 from discriminating against all of its teachers and all of its students on the basis of race through illegal and unconstitutional teacher training, classroom curriculum, and overall policies and procedures," according to the case's page on the foundation's website.