DOJ Sues MPS For Preferential Treatment Of Non-White Teachers

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) over a collective bargaining agreement giving preferential treatment to non-white teachers and shelling out other benefits based on race.

After settling a three-week strike of the Minnesota Federation of Teachers in 2022, MPS included a provision in new teacher contracts that let teachers who were not white bypass the normal system of layoffs and involuntary assignments (which are typically based on seniority), indicating the school system now has a policy of retaining racially “underrepresented” teachers over white teachers who have been there longer.

“Employers may not provide more favorable terms and conditions of employment based on an employee’s race and sex,” Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon said in a Wednesday announcement. “The Department of Justice will vigorously pursue employers who deny their employees equal opportunities and benefits by classifying and limiting them based on their race, color, national origin, or sex.”

The complaint also notes other benefits given by the school district to non-white teachers for being members of third-party organizations, like “Black Men Teach Fellows,” which is not available to white or female teachers.

Artificially disadvantaging anyone who is white, and particularly white men, is standard practice for practitioners of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideology, but the school district allegedly went further by setting actual percentage quotas for hiring based entirely on race.

According to the complaint, MPS explicitly stated its intention for the teaching staff to be “at least 40%” “BIPOC” — that is, black, indigenous, and people of color — by 2026. They also set a goal that at least 54.3 percent of new hires identify as non-white by 2026-2027.

“This preferential treatment is plainly discriminatory and unlawful,” the filing states. “While Defendants claim that these provisions are to stop discrimination, they require Defendants to blatantly discriminate against teachers based on their race, color, sex, and national origin.”

The Justice Department is asking that the court declare MPS’s protocols a Title VII civil rights violation and permanently stop them from being able to discriminate.

The crackdown on MPS’s alleged anti-white discriminatory policies comes even as the system’s Somali population faces scrutiny over fraud schemes that likely exceed $1 billion, leading even The New York Times to cover the story. The policies are a reminder that the entire state of Minnesota has already made significant concessions to the (primarily Somali) migrant population imported there for the past several decades, including allowing the establishment of charter schools directly catered to them, fueling an anti-assimilation posture.

According to a 2025 study by Abdiqani Y. Farah of the University of Northeastern Somalia, about 12 percent of charter schools in the entire state of Minnesota are led by Somalis, and in those schools the student populations are between 98 percent and 100 percent Somali. “Interviews with parents and school leaders reveal that the primary motivations are not traditional academic metrics,” Farah states. “Instead, parents prioritize ‘safe havens’ that ensure cultural and religious preservation, safety from discrimination, and language maintenance.”