Discussion: USDE’s Office of Civil Rights letter notifying school districts to eliminate all DEI programs or potential loss of federal funding
February 26, 2025
Description
Description:
On Wednesday, February 26th, at 4 pm (CDT) KSBRC held a discussion concerning the recent Executive Order by President Trump to end government support for programs promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued a Dear Colleague letter on Feb. 14 demanding that state agencies and school districts remove all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programming from school district curriculums and warning that failure to comply with the directive by Feb. 28 could result in cuts in federal funding. Federal aid accounted for approximately 12% of public school funding in Kansas. The Kansas State Department of Education has left the decision on how to handle diversity, equity, and inclusion content in the hands of local school officials.
The School Boards for Academic Excellence Kansas legal hotline team, Ryan Kriegshauser and Josh Ney, from the Kriegshauser Ney Law Group will provide an overview of the ORC letter and discuss the legal implications for school boards under this new directive.
Panelists:
Ryan A. Kriegshauser
Mr. Krieghauser has served his country as a Naval Officer and is a veteran of Afghanistan. Ryan also served as a prosecutor and the General Counsel at the Office of the Kansas Securities Commissioner. Ryan previously served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Office of Legal Counsel and Policy. He also served on the Kansas Judicial Counsel’s Lien Law Advisory Committee, the State Rules and Regulation Board, the Kansas Bar Association’s Limited Liability Company Study Group, and served as a voting member of the Kansas Governor’s Commission on Emergency Planning & Response Continuity of Operations Planning Committee.
Additionally, Ryan has written scholarly articles on property rights and taught continuing legal education in Kansas. He spent two years working in Washington, DC, both on and off Capitol Hill.
Mr. Kriegshauser holds a B.A. and a J.D., graduating from Georgetown University and the University of Missouri at Kansas City. He currently serves in the Navy Reserve.
Joshua A. Ney:
Josh Ney served as the Kansas Securities Commissioner and as Kansas’s chief regulator of the financial services industry from 2013-2017. Josh has personally won jury verdicts for his clients in both federal and state court. His extensive experience in complex civil and administrative legal disputes has established Josh’s career as a public servant and private litigator around maintaining integrity and accomplishing results.
As an experienced criminal litigator both for the prosecution and criminal defense clients, Mr. Ney has successfully tried many high-level jury trials to verdict.