Federal Civil Rights Complaint Filed Over DC Public Schools’ Race-Based ‘Empowerment’ Club

District of Columbia Public Schools discriminate among students based on race with an “affinity group” program, according to a federal civil rights complaint filed earlier this month by parental rights group Parents Defending Education.

The organization submitted the complaint on Jan. 9 with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, requesting an investigation into a program called the “Empowerment Club.”

The complaint accused District of Columbia Public Schools of violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by only making the club available to some students, in particular “Black girls who identify as Black, African, African American, biracial, or part of the African diaspora and nonbinary students,” as seen on a flyer advertising the program.

That flyer described the opportunity as a “weekly afterschool club” that lasts for eight weeks and focuses on leadership building, creative projects, and chances to increase confidence and self-esteem.

The program is open for children between first and fifth grade who meet the criteria.

Parents Defending Education, which opposes “discrimination on the basis of race and political indoctrination in America’s schools,” noted that the school system only allows “some students to participate in affinity group programming and participation is based on their race.”

“We ask that the Department promptly investigate the allegations in this complaint, act swiftly to remedy unlawful policies and practices, and order appropriate relief,” the group said.

Caroline Moore, the vice president of Parents Defending Education, said in comments to WJLA-TV that the club has “created an academic community in which students are purposely separated because of their race at a very young age.”

“It is unconscionable that this is happening in public schools, let alone in a metropolitan area, at such impressionable ages,” Moore contended.

“Public schools should foster all students based on their needs and encourage them to befriend all of their classmates, not just the ones who look like them.”

WJLA-TV reported that Parents Defending Education has submitted several similar complaints over “affinity groups” across the country.

That includes programs discovered at Boston Public Schools in Massachusetts and Rochester Public Schools in Minnesota.

Parents Defending Education described affinity groups as “school-sponsored groups that deliberately separate and divide students and staff into groups based on their skin color, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.”

The organization said, they are “being used in public and private schools all over the country.”

Even as schools claim that the programs “create supportive environments for students with d interests,” affinity groups instead “use skin color, ethnicity, or sexual orientation to define their groups.”

“Affinity groups, similar to social-emotional learning, ethnic studies may sound benign, noble even, but it is neither benign nor noble to separate students by race or any other immutable trait,” Parents Defending Education added.

“These groups teach children that our sameness and our differences are found in our immutable traits like skin color.”

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