A federal judge in New Hampshire officially threw out a year-long lawsuit against the Trump administration’s “anti-DEI” directive to public schools after both sides agreed that the lawsuit was no longer needed.
Judge Landya McCafferty agreed on Tuesday to an agreement between the National Education Association, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the U.S. Department of Justice. The court received that agreement on February 3, 2016, and it said that the fight over the policy was over.
The lawsuit was about a letter from the federal Department of Education to public schools across the country in February 2025. A month after President Donald Trump took office, the letter said that the department would look into school districts that had policies or contacts related to “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” The letter told school districts to change any policies and end any contracts that included DEI. It also said that keeping those policies could break federal civil rights law and cause the department to stop giving federal money.
The New Hampshire Department of Education, which gives federal money to school districts, told them to check their current contracts and vendors and report any possible violations of the new rules in response to the letter.
School officials were worried about losing money because of the letter. In March 2025, a group of school districts in New Hampshire, along with the state and national branches of the National Education Association (a teachers’ union) and the American Civil Liberties Union, sued the action in the U.S. District Court of New Hampshire in Concord. They said it was an unconstitutional attempt to keep money from schools.
In early April, the federal department agreed to put off looking into and enforcing the policy for a few weeks. Then, on April 24, McCaffery issued a temporary injunction that stopped any action against some New Hampshire school districts.
“DEI as a concept is broad; one can imagine a wide range of viewpoints on what values of diversity, equity, and inclusion mean when describing a program or practice,” McCafferty wrote then. “It is no surprise that several courts — including this one — have struck down similar laws as void for vagueness.”
This is the second big courtroom ruling this week for the Trump administration.
A federal judge on Monday agreed to permanently block the release of volume two of former special counsel Jack Smith’s report, which focuses on how President Trump handled classified materials after his first term in office.
Aileen Cannon, a U.S. District Judge who was appointed by Trump, agreed to the president’s request to stop the release of the second volume of the report permanently.
She said that publishing it would be a “manifest injustice” to Trump and the other defendants in the classified documents case.
“Special Counsel Smith, acting without lawful authority, obtained an indictment in this action and initiated proceedings that resulted in a final order of dismissal of all charges,” Cannon said Monday.
The ruling blocks the Justice Department from “releasing, distributing, conveying, or sharing with anyone outside the Department of Justice any information or conclusions in Volume II or in drafts thereof.”
The announcement coincides with the scheduled release of Volume II of Smith’s special counsel probe on Tuesday.
Trump’s former defense attorney, Kendra Wharton, praised Cannon’s decision to block Volume II of Smith’s report from being released publicly, telling Fox News Digital in a statement that her “courage and judicial resolve on these important due process issues should be recognized and taught in law school classrooms across America.”
Cannon had already said that Smith’s appointment as special counsel was against the law, but the case was dropped after Trump won re-election in 2024.
In 2022, former Attorney General Merrick Garland asked Smith to look into claims that Trump and his allies tried to change the results of the 2020 election and that Trump kept secret documents at his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach after leaving office in 2021.
In both cases, Smith had filed charges against Trump.
After Trump’s election, the charges were dropped, which is in line with a long-standing policy of the Justice Department that says sitting presidents shouldn’t be prosecuted for federal crimes. Soon after, Smith quit his job.
