FIRST ON FOX: One of Colorado's largest school districts is facing a new federal civil rights complaint over a pledge it made with its teachers' union to recruit, retain and advance educators of color.Defending Education filed a federal civil rights complaint Monday, which was first obtained by Fox News Digital, with the U.S.Department of Education alleging that CCSD is discriminating on the basis of race in employment.
CCSD is notably Colorado’s fourth-largest school district, and serves 52,000 students and more than 300,000 residents in the southeast Denver metropolitan area, according to the district’s website.At the heart of the complaint is the district's June 2023 "Educators of Color Declaration," which commits Cherry Creek School District and its teacher’s union to recruiting, retaining and advancing educators of color, even as a separate provision in the same agreement calls for recruitment, hiring and advancement to be based on qualifications without regard to race."Cherry Creek Schools has written racial preferences directly into its teachers’ contract.The district’s ‘Educators of Color Declaration’ commits it to recruiting, retaining, and promoting teachers based on the color of their skin — which means other equally qualified teachers are passed over for the same reason," Sarah Parshall Perry, Vice President and Senior Legal Fellow at Defending Education, told Fox News Digital.Hundreds protest outside a rally held by President Donald Trump at Macomb County Community College in Warren, MI, on April 29, 2025.
(Getty Images/Dominic Gwinn)"That's not diversity; it's discrimination, and it is precisely what Title VI and the Fourteenth Amendment forbid.The Supreme Court could not have been clearer in Students for Fair Admissions: the law is colorblind, and a school district cannot cure a race-based hiring policy with generic 'equal opportunity' language."Title VI prohibits race discrimination in federally funded programs under specified cond...