In an ironic twist, the Trump administration appears to be punishing Department of Education employees for attending diversity training sessions that were held during his first term.
Over the weekend the news began to emerge that even Education Department employees who were not directly involved in doing DEI work were swept up in the effort to enforce President Trump’s anti-DEI.
But the situation presents a kafkaesque irony: The same employees who followed the first Trump administration’s directives on increasing diversity in the workplace and attending relevant training courses are now being punished for their compliance with those directives.
At least 74 employees of the Education Department have been placed on administrative leave since Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, the union representing Education Department employees told TPM. The vast majority of employees affected do not work on diversity initiatives, Brittany Coleman, an attorney in the department’s Office for Civil Rights and steward of the employee union told TPM, but the Trump administration cited the anti-DEI executive order as the reason for placing the employees on leave.
TPM obtained a copy of the notice that some department employees received Friday informing them they were being put on leave pursuant to Trump’s anti-DEI order:
The legality and validity of the move is totally unclear. None of the due process provisions that protect federal civil service employees appear to have been followed here. Coleman told TPM that the union was considering its legal options. Some of the affected employees have retained private counsel.
The Department of Education didn’t return TPM’s request for comment.
The first department employees targeted worked on initiatives relating to HBCUs and a Bush-era program to spur access to education for Hispanics, Coleman said.
The single office with the largest number of affected people was Federal Student Aid, Coleman said, with at least 16 employees placed on administrative leave. The leaves have unfolded in a series of waves, she said, with the first two being placed on leave on Jan. 22. One of the two worked on an initiative targeted at helping HBCUs gain access to federal funding; the other worked on the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics, which began under President George H. W. Bush.
Three more employees were placed on leave on Jan. 29; the rest received notice on Friday.
In interviews with TPM, three affected Department of Education employees said they received their notice on Friday evening. One employee, who spoke to TPM on condition of anonymity due to fear of reprisals, said that they initially thought the message was a mistake. But after hearing from other affected colleague, the employee came to believe that they all had something in common: They had attended diversity trainings. The employee told TPM that the session they first attended took place in 2019, during the Trump administration.
A second employee took the same training: a “diversity change agent” training course. The second employee said that they were initially encouraged to take the course under Trump-era Secretary Betsy Devos. So many people wanted to take the class that it wasn’t until the following year, they said, until there was an opening.
“We were encouraged to take this course,” the second employee said. “Do I work in DEIA? No. That is not my job.”
A third employee shared the language of a 2019 performance plan. Among other things, the Trump I-era plan asked department managers to provide “a work environment that promotes equality, diversity, and inclusion and that is free from discrimination, harassment, and retaliation.” The third employee said that 12 members of one office had been placed on administrative leave. Out of that group, the person said, four had taken the training during Trump’s first term.
The employee who said that they were first encouraged to take the diversity course under Devos promised to keep fighting to return their position.
“These actions are designed to create the same hostile work environment that we were being trained to fight against,” the person added.
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