“I have never seen anything like it during my 40 years of work in this field,” says Julie Underwood, former School of Education dean at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an expert in civil rights and education law.
Underwood says that, normally, if a district or state were in violation of civil rights laws, they would have a chance to prove their case.
“They would have due process. You’d have to go through the procedures that are set out in the statute and regulations in order to cut those federal funds,” she explains.