When “Ending Discrimination” Becomes an Attack on Diversity

The Trump administration says it wants to stop racial discrimination in schools. But as usual, the fine print matters.

The Treasury Department and IRS have proposed new regulations that could strip private schools and colleges of their federal tax-exempt status if they use race in admissions, scholarships, financial aid, athletics, or other school programs.

On the surface, that can sound pretty reasonable.

Nobody should support racial discrimination.

But keep reading.

The administration isn't just talking about a school refusing to admit someone because of the color of their skin. This proposal comes as part of a much larger campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion programs — programs that were created in the first place because equal treatment on paper hasn't always meant equal opportunity in real life.

And this isn't a small policy change.

The Treasury Department estimates that as many as 18,000 private schools, colleges, universities, professional schools and trade schools could potentially be affected.

Schools that don't comply could lose their federal tax-exempt status.

That's a pretty powerful weapon.

Here's the part I think we need to pay attention to.

The administration describes race-conscious programs as discrimination and argues that opportunities should instead be based on merit.

Again, that sounds simple.

But what exactly does “merit” mean when everyone didn't start from the same place?

Pretending race no longer affects opportunity doesn't make racial inequality disappear.

There is a difference between saying:

“You can't come here because of your race.”

and saying:

“We recognize that certain communities have historically faced barriers, and we're trying to make sure they have a fair opportunity.”

Those two things are now increasingly being treated as though they're the same.

I don't think they are.

There is some important context here.

The Trump administration didn't invent the principle that discriminatory private schools can lose their tax-exempt status.

In Bob Jones University v. United States, the Supreme Court upheld the IRS's ability to deny tax-exempt status to a university because of racially discriminatory policies.

And in 2023, the Supreme Court struck down race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina.

The Trump administration is using those decisions as part of the legal justification for this new proposal.

But here's where the political fight begins.

The administration wants to apply a broad nondiscrimination standard across admissions, scholarships, loans, athletics and other programs — including policies associated with DEI.

Critics worry that this turns the IRS into another tool the federal government can use to pressure schools into abandoning diversity programs.

That's the part worth watching.

And there is another piece of the fine print.

Schools could still help disadvantaged students.

They just couldn't use race to decide who receives that help.

The proposed rule specifically allows schools to consider things such as family income, geographic location, first-generation college status, individual hardship, military-family status and academic achievement.

That distinction matters.

You can believe assistance should be available to poor and disadvantaged students of every race while still questioning why the federal government is so aggressively targeting programs created to address racial inequality.

Those ideas aren't mutually exclusive.

This is bigger than DEI.

What concerns me most isn't one scholarship program or one college admissions policy.

It's the growing use of federal power to force institutions to adopt the administration's preferred view of race, education and American history.

We've already watched DEI programs become political targets.

We've watched universities come under increasing federal pressure.

Now we're talking about using something as consequential as tax-exempt status.

Whether you love DEI, hate DEI or fall somewhere in between, we should probably be asking the same question:

How much power should any president have to financially punish educational institutions whose policies his administration doesn't like?

Because presidents change.

Political parties change.

And government powers created for the policies you support today can eventually be used for policies you don't.

That's why I keep coming back to the same thing:

Read the fine print.

The headline says this is about stopping racial discrimination.

The bigger story may be about who gets to define discrimination — and how much power the federal government should have to enforce that definition.

— Political Fine Print