A warning letter fired off by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt to the federal government about Critical Race Theory (CRT) curriculum in public schools is likely to be ignored and decried as racist, according to a St. Louis attorney.
Schmitt wrote the letter to the U.S. Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona in response to a proposed new rule establishing priorities for grants in American history and civics education programs
“America's founding ideals have served as a city on a hill to people in governments, all over the world. Inspiring freedom, justice, and equality under the law,” Schmitt wrote in the May 19 letter. “Yet the department's proposal would give no weight to the greatest ideas in American history expressed in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Gettysburg Address, the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, the 14th Amendment and Martin Luther King Jr's I Have a Dream Speech.”
The educational proposals include teaching students that the history of America began with slavery in 1619, not in 1776.
“If the federal government is successful in implementing critical race theory, state power in many areas will be history,” said attorney Sydney Chase. “The federal government will control education everywhere. Once that's done, it's a small thing to move on to control other areas. That will effectively end the federal system established by the Founders in the Constitution.”
Schmitt also joined a coalition of 20 states in sending a separate letter, commenting on the same issue.
“Though the Department does not overtly refer to CRT in its priorities, it is prioritizing teaching this highly controversial ideology through the vehicle of this grant program,” the multistate letter states. “This is hardly what Congress intended when it authorized this program. CRT focuses how our current government mechanisms are irretrievably flawed. Its theorists posit that our Nation’s values, ideals, foundations and institutions – the things Congress intended to promote – instead produce ‘inequity’ demanding actions to modify this result.”
Chase told the St. Louis Record that he foresees Schmitt and the coalition of states suing the federal government if the education proposals proceed.
“With the current composition of many federal courts and the U.S. Supreme Court, the chances of ultimate success are good,” he said. “Tactically, with the lethargic pace of litigation, I can see these states holding the Biden Department of Education off until 2024, hoping for a one-term Biden Presidency.”
Chase added that he is surprised more states didn’t join in the coalition’s letter.
“I believe that more will when litigation actually begins,” he said. “The federal government has no right to set any state's curricula but it doesn't surprise me. The Democratic Party has always chosen - when it had the power - since the 1930s to expand federal power at the expense of the states. It has also sought to expand the power of executive agencies - at the expense of the states and the Congress.”