We expect it in California and New York, but Minnesota has become one of the most aggressive states in reshaping education. Defending Education has documented the statewide leftward shift, and it is a civil-rights crisis.
In October, Defending Ed filed a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education over Minneapolis Public Schools’ racially segregated classes, which appeared to be available only to black students, in violation of Title VI and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
We settled this question in 1954. In Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court made it clear that segregating students by race in public schools is unconstitutional.
In that same Minnesota district, students in a required Ethnic Studies class conduct a “structural analysis of racism and colonialism,” viewing everything through a race-based, anti-capitalist and Marxist lens.
The course cites Critical Race Theory, promotes the ideas of Karl Marx and peddles the notion that capitalism and Western culture are to blame for slavery, genocide, colonialism and white supremacy. Teachers then ask students to “challenge the ‘white savior’ narrative” and complete a Youth Led Participatory Action Research project that pushes them into activism.
In 2023, lawmakers required that by 2026 every high school add an ethnic studies course that can count toward graduation along with history, geography, economics and civics.
Ethnic studies is touted as a curriculum to promote tolerance and cultural understanding, but we’ve documented how it is a trojan horse for activism in the classroom, framing society as divided between oppressors and the oppressed.
Minnesota is also fighting the Trump administration’s “Gender Ideology” and “Sports Ban” orders as unlawful rewrites of Title IX. At the same time, under the banner of a group called Gender Justice, school board candidates published a joint initiative supporting “the full inclusion of transgender and nonbinary students in school athletics,” which they claim Title IX protects.
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