Justice Department Opinion: Federal Magnet School Aid Cannot Be Tied to Unconstitutional Race-Based Criteria
The U.S. Department of Justice announced on November 5, 2026, that its Office of Legal Counsel had issued an opinion clarifying the limits on the Department of Education's authority to consider race when administering the Magnet Schools Assistance Program (MSAP): federal education aid cannot be tied to unconstitutional race-based criteria. MSAP is a federal competitive grant program that funds school districts to promote voluntary desegregation and expand educational opportunities for students.
The opinion explains that MSAP's statutory and regulatory framework ties federal funding to race-based concepts such as "minority-group isolation" and the use of racial data to shape funding decisions. Because those criteria condition federal support on racial considerations, the opinion concludes the program must be evaluated under strict scrutiny, the Constitution's most rigorous standard.
Under that standard, the Department of Education may approve MSAP grants only when an applicant demonstrates that its use of race is narrowly tailored to remedy a specific and identified instance of illegal discrimination. Grants based solely on goals such as increasing racial diversity, reducing racial isolation, or altering racial balance, untethered from the remediation of unlawful discrimination, cannot be approved, the opinion makes clear.
Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser of the Office of Legal Counsel said the opinion reaffirms a foundational principle of the constitutional order: government programs must treat individuals as individuals, not as members of racial groups, and only in exceptionally rare circumstances may funding decisions turn on a school's racial composition. Deputy Assistant Attorney General Joshua Craddock, who signed the opinion, said federal dollars must never be used to engineer unconstitutional racial balancing. The Justice Department said it will work closely with the Department of Education to ensure MSAP awards fully comply with these constitutional requirements while continuing to support magnet schools' mission. (Source: U.S. Department of Justice)
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
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