SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - A federal judge on Thursday granted the San Francisco Unified School District a court order blocking AmeriCorps from taking back over $650,000 in funding it already awarded the district for programs that have diversity, equity and inclusion practices.
The decision comes after AmeriCorps, a federal agency that oversees grants and funding for underserved populations nationwide, issued a directive on Feb. 13 directing all grant activities that "promote DEI" and get in line with President Donald Trump's executive orders on DEI, "gender ideology" and climate change or have their funding taken away.
The judge's order, which will last until the matter is decided in court, prevents AmeriCorps from freezing, terminating or changing any funding it has already granted San Francisco schools for programs with DEI practices after the agency tried to impose new conditions on the funding in February.
U.S. District Judge Edward M. Chen ruled the school district was likely to succeed on its claims that AmeriCorps' new conditions were unlawfully vague, "arbitrary and capricious" and violated both federal law and the U.S. Constitution.
"At bottom, AmeriCorps offers no substantive reasons justifying its radical change of course other than its rote recitation of the need to implement the executive orders," Chen stated.
The school district claims that AmeriCorps's directive was unconstitutionally vague and that after several grant amendments and conversations, the plaintiffs "still do not know what compliance requires."
In his decision, Chen sided with the district, saying that both Trump's executive orders and the agency's new directive were "highly ambiguous" in the first place, and their vagueness has forced schools to try and "interpret" their meaning to avoid violating the law.
As a result, the Barack Obama appointee said that the new directive has had a "chilling effect" where the district has begun needlessly scaling back its programs, and district employees are censoring themselves in conversations with students for fear their actions will jeopardize their funding.
Chen ruled that federal grant conditions must be "unambiguous" so that recipients can "ascertain what is expected" of them. Failing this, Chen found that AmeriCorps' directive likely violated the Spending Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
Moreover, the judge said his decisions were in good precedent.
"Our sister courts concur that analogous anti-DEI and anti-equity or equity-related conditions related to President Trump's executive orders are likely too ill-defined to be enforced," Chen said, referencing recent decisions by other federal courts.
The judge said a risk of "irreparable harm" could occur to the district without the court's decision, citing the possible loss of its funding and its confusion as to compliance with the executive orders, which the judge said has already impacted the effectiveness of its programs.
Although the school district won a temporary order from the court in March that barred the agency from modifying any previously awarded grants, the judge's newest order has secured the future of the school district's federal funding, at least for the moment.
The school district sued AmeriCorps in early March, challenging the agency's new directive.
At a previous hearing, AmeriCorps lawyers struggled to answer Chen's questions about what school programs counted as DEI-related, including if restorative justice circles, identity-based student clubs or cultural heritage celebrations like Black History Month, Lunar New Year or LGBTQ+ Pride Month were covered by its DEI instructions.
The school district receives nearly $700,000 from AmeriCorps annually, which it primarily uses to tutor vulnerable students at 38 public schools in the district. Superintendent Maria Su said the money from AmeriCorps was integral to supporting vital programs and preserving resources for the district, which was already planning to lay off teachers to address a $113 million deficit when the clawback threat came down.
The city of Santa Fe, New Mexico, joined San Francisco Unified in the lawsuit, claiming it would need to eliminate programs for seniors and children if the AmeriCorps funding is taken away.
This isn't the first time the White House's new directives around DEI have been tested in court. In May, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation also fought for its federal funding in court, claiming Trump's executive orders were too vague.
This case was filed in the Northern District of California.
Source: Courthouse News Service
