Cherry Creek School District, Colorado’s fourth-largest school district serving roughly 52,000 students in the southeast Denver metro area, is facing a new federal civil rights complaint over an agreement it made with its teachers’ union to recruit and promote more educators of color.
Defending Education, an advocacy group, filed the complaint Monday with the U.S. Department of Education, arguing that the district is discriminating on the basis of race in its employment practices.
The complaint centers on the district’s June 2023 “Educators of Color Declaration,” part of its negotiated agreement with the teachers’ union. The declaration commits the district to recruiting, retaining and advancing educators of color, while a separate clause in the same agreement states that hiring and advancement decisions should be based on qualifications without regard to race.
Sarah Parshall Perry, Vice President and Senior Legal Fellow at Defending Education, said the two provisions can’t be reconciled.
“Cherry Creek Schools has written racial preferences directly into its teachers’ contract. The district’s ‘Educators of Color Declaration’ commits it to recruiting, retaining, and promoting teachers based on the color of their skin — which means other equally qualified teachers are passed over for the same reason,” Perry told Fox News Digital. “That’s not diversity; it’s discrimination, and it is precisely what Title VI and the Fourteenth Amendment forbid. The Supreme Court could not have been clearer in Students for Fair Admissions: the law is colorblind, and a school district cannot cure a race-based hiring policy with generic ‘equal opportunity’ language.”
Title VI bars race discrimination in federally funded programs under certain conditions, while Title VII more directly addresses employment discrimination. Whether Cherry Creek’s commitments run afoul of either law may depend on how the district actually carries them out in practice.
According to the district’s 2026-2027 Negotiated Agreement, the declaration commits the district and the union to intentionally recruiting highly qualified educators of color, making an effort to retain those already on staff, and helping them move into leadership roles. The agreement also states that “to fulfill these goals, all policies in this agreement shall reflect Cherry Creek School District core values by grounding the work of negotiations in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).”
Perry argued that accepting federal funding comes with legal obligations the district cannot sidestep.
“Cherry Creek is under no obligation to accept federal funding, but because it has, it cannot run a racial balancing scheme for its own workforce and still adhere to federal law,” Perry said. “We are asking the Office for Civil Rights to open an investigation and put an end to it.”
This is not the district’s first brush with federal scrutiny. On June 8, the Department of Education opened a separate investigation into allegations that Cherry Creek sponsored racially discriminatory programs affecting students, teachers and parents. Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said at the time that “these allegations of racially discriminatory conduct in this District seem to permeate almost every aspect of the school community, affecting students, teachers, and parents alike. Federal law prohibits racial discrimination, which means that race cannot be a factor in how the school educates its students or trains its teachers.”
The new complaint arrives as the Trump administration continues a broader push against diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in education nationwide, including a September proposal to revoke tax-exempt status from private schools and colleges that factor race into admissions, scholarships or other programs.
Cherry Creek School District did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A Department of Education spokesperson said the agency does not confirm complaints.
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