A New York school district was mired in a pitched battle over its Native American mascot.
The school board in Lancaster, a small district near Buffalo, had voted to banish its “Redskins” imagery and nickname. But parents protested that the mascot was a source of pride. Teachers arrived to class sporting outfits with the logo. And students regularly ran into reminders of the old mascot in classrooms, gyms and locker rooms.
The year was 2015.
The school district was accused of violating students’ civil rights when it persisted in showcasing the mascot, and the U.S. Education Department opened an investigation. The imbroglio eventually ended with an accord between the district and the federal government to halt the use of the mascot.
A decade since the battle began in Lancaster, the elimination of Native American mascots from public schools has re-emerged as a contentious political issue, and New York again finds itself at the center of a firestorm. The state has required districts to abandon mascots that appropriate Native culture, or risk losing funding.
But this time, the federal government’s stance is very different.
The Education Department recently began a civil rights investigation into the state’s mandate to banish certain mascots after the Massapequa district on Long Island refused to forgo its decades-old “Chief” mascot, a Native American man wearing a feathered headdress.
On Friday, the federal education secretary, Linda McMahon, is expected to visit the district to announce whether by restricting the use of Native mascots, the state violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits recipients of federal funds from engaging in discriminatory behavior based on race, color or national origin.
The Trump administration’s approach to the issue reflects a stark shift in the application of federal civil rights protections, legal experts said, and illustrates the transformation of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, which is charged with investigating complaints and ensuring an equal opportunity to education for the nation’s children.
The stakes for New York could be steep. Education Department civil rights investigations historically have been lengthy and arduous, but seldom result in the loss of federal funds. As with many practices, however, the Trump administration has taken a distinctly different tack with Title VI, aggressively targeting the bottom lines of colleges and school districts that run afoul of its priorities, and at times flouting standard procedure.
Robert Kim, the executive director of the Education Law Center, a legal nonprofit focused on achieving equity for public school students, said it was imperative under federal civil rights law to treat issues consistently. The mascot controversy, he said, showed the Trump administration moving in the opposite direction, focusing on certain student populations and not others.
It was unclear to Mr. Kim whether the Education Department would seriously consider a case arguing that the presence of a Native American mascot negatively affected children — such as the complaint filed in the Lancaster Central School District dispute.
“You need to have a neutral attitude and then apply the law faithfully,” Mr. Kim said. “But this administration has signaled that it has no intention of honoring or investigating a similar complaint.”
Conservatives have argued that the department’s investigation into New York’s mascot ban appears to be justified. Adam Kissel, a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a think tank best known for Project 2025, the conservative policy blueprint for reshaping the federal government, said the civil rights office had too often disregarded “reverse discrimination” claims.
He added that one reason the United States needed the civil rights laws that were enacted in 1964 was that Southern Democrats had refused to honor the equality of all citizens.
“But over the last generation or two, progressive advocates of affirmative action haven’t wanted to honor that either,” said Mr. Kissel, who is a former deputy assistant secretary in the U.S. Education Department. “The state should step in on both sides of the equation.”
A spokeswoman for the Education Department did not respond to a request for comment.
The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights fielded more than 22,000 complaints from parents and students last year alone. Many involve allegations of wrongful treatment of students with disabilities or discrimination based on race or sex.
But the Trump administration gutted the office’s staff and reshaped its priorities. In recent months, the agency has homed in on the participation of transgender athletes on girls’ teams and on diversity and inclusion efforts that it argues discriminate against white and Asian students, including a Chicago public schools program meant to boost Black children’s academic outcomes.
Roughly one in five complaints filed with the Office for Civil Rights traditionally fall under Title VI. President John F. Kennedy envisioned the law as a more effective tool to promote desegregation in publicly funded programs and in schools — which had stalled on the issue after the 1954 ruling in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case.
Title VI has come under fire from Republicans, who argue against what they view as overreach on issues such as school discipline. The Trump administration ordered federal agencies this month to abandon the use of a legal tool designed to root out discrimination. That tool, known as disparate impact, is used to examine whether policies that appear to be neutral — such as school suspension rules or zoning regulations — produce different outcomes for different demographic groups.
Cara McClellan, a University of Pennsylvania associate law professor and civil rights law expert, said she viewed the Education Department’s shift on the mascot issue as part of a broader agenda to undermine the legacy of a law that helped dismantle Jim Crow.
“Piece by piece, it’s attempting to chip away at the progress that was made under Title VI,” she said, “but also at the tools available to ensure that ongoing discrimination is legally able to be combated.”
New York and other states, including California and Maine, have required the elimination of Native mascots in recent years to promote inclusion and to follow the guidance of many tribes, who argue that the imagery can harm children and their self-esteem.
The Education Department has not always determined that Native American mascots violate civil rights, especially if investigators do not identify harm to specific students. But as recently as last fall, the federal government appeared to regard the concerns as valid.
In Lancaster, students reported that they had been taunted by classmates shouting, “Redskin, Redskin!” and told to sit out of Spirit Week activities if they were offended by the mascot, according to a federal resolution letter obtained by The New York Times.
The civil rights office wrote in September — during the Biden administration — that by failing to abandon its mascot, the district “might have perpetuated a hostile environment for students.”
Seven months later, Ms. McMahon, Mr. Trump’s education secretary, weighed in on a different case, the one involving the Massapequa mascot. She accused New York of trying “to rewrite history and deny the town of Massapequa the right to celebrate its heritage” through its broader mascot ban.
“It is not lost on the department that there are several mascots that refer to Indigenous or ethnic groups — the Vikings, Fighting Irish, the Cowboys — and yet New York has specifically singled out Native American heritage,” she said in a news release.
The Native American Guardians Association, which filed a federal complaint over the state’s mascot ban, has argued against the removal of other Native imagery, filing an unsuccessful suit against the N.F.L. team in Washington after it dropped the “Redskins” name and logo.
Frank Blackcloud, the vice president of the group, which says its mission is to “educate, not eradicate,” said in a statement provided by the Education Department that the preservation of Native themes in schools was “vital to educational equity, historical truth and the civil rights of all American Indians.”
The organization did not respond to several requests for comment.
To some former Education Department officials, the chasm between the two mascot investigations is evidence of an alarming shift.
Jackie Gharapour Wernz, a longtime civil rights lawyer who worked in the Education Department during the second Obama term and first Trump administration, said that longstanding practice would make it highly unusual for the department to signal its stance on a complaint before an investigation.
Ms. Gharapour Wernz and other former federal workers said they were worried that urgent issues in schools — such as the seclusion of students with disabilities, the use of racial slurs and the disproportionate discipline of Black girls — could be neglected as the department focuses on making political points.
“The mental gymnastics that you have to go through to find a civil rights violation there, it’s stunning,” she said. “But this is just not your mother’s civil rights office. This is an advocacy organization.”
Troy Closson is a Times education reporter focusing on K-12 schools.
The post Under Trump, a Native American Mascot Debate Is Turned Upside Down appeared first on New York Times.
