Comment on FR Doc # 2026-12861

Re: Docket No. ED-2026-OESE-0958: Rescinding the Equity Assistance Center Program Regulations (34 CFR Part 270) Dear Secretary McMahon: I support rescinding these regulations. America's commitment to equal justice did not arise in a vacuum. It grew from the conviction that every human being possesses inherent dignity because each person is created in the image of God. That principle inspired generations of Americans to abolish slavery, advance civil rights, build schools and hospitals, and extend liberty to those who had been denied it. Government best honors that legacy not by assigning worth according to race or identity, but by protecting the equal rights and equal dignity of every person under the law. Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was written in that spirit. It authorized technical assistance for one thing: helping school boards desegregate on the basis of race, color, religion, and national origin, so that no student would be treated differently because of who they are. The 2016 rulemaking moved away from that principle, expanding "sex desegregation" to cover gender identity, transgender status, and non-conformity with sex-role expectations. That's a policy choice an agency made on its own, and it replaces the statute's commitment to equal treatment with a framework built around identity categories Congress never named. The numbers back up rescission too. New desegregation orders are rare now, and the ones still active sit mostly in a single region. Locking a shrinking, geographically lopsided need into a rigid, multi-year regional grant structure doesn't make sense. Rescission doesn't touch the Department's underlying duty to provide desegregation assistance. It just frees up how that assistance gets delivered, whether through direct agency staff, contracts, or the partnership already announced with DOJ, whose civil rights work fits the statute's actual purpose better than a network of grantees with wide latitude to define "equity" however they choose. Only three grants remain active, none held by a state, local, or tribal government, and the Department has already committed to an orderly transition for current clients. This is a low-cost place to undo years of definitional drift before it gets baked into another grant cycle. I urge the Department to finalize this rescission and return this program to the equal-treatment principle it was built on. Jacqueline Andrews