Congressional Democrats press DeVos, Sessions on affirmative action policies

The top Democrats on the congressional education and judiciary committees say they’re concerned about the Trump administration’s possible efforts to target university affirmative action policies — and want more information about where the Education and Justice departments stand on the issue.

The lawmakers write today in a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos that they have “serious outstanding concerns about the Trump Administration’s intention regarding policies to promote racial diversity in university admissions and the scope of work your agencies may be undertaking on this issue.

“Any effort to limit universities’ ability to take students’ backgrounds, including their race, into account during the admissions process is an abrupt and extremely troubling shift in policy for both Departments,” said the letter, which was signed by Reps. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

The letter follows reports earlier this month that the Justice Department was preparing to redirect investigative resources to target university admissions policies that were deemed to discriminate against applicants based on race. The Justice Department said the leaked internal document that set off those reports did not reflect a broad policy shift but instead referred to a single investigation of allegations that Harvard University discriminated against Asian-American applicants.

DeVos told the Associated Press earlier this month that her agency was not involved with the Justice Department’s internal posting. She said that affirmative action “has been a question before the courts and the courts have opined.”

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