Federal officials overseeing Head Start grants have instructed providers to steer clear of a long list of words in their applications, a move that critics say could fundamentally alter how the early childhood program operates and whom it serves.
Court filings submitted last month reveal that the Department of Health and Human Services directed a Head Start director in Wisconsin to remove specific language from her grant application. According to the filings, the initial guidance covered dozens of terms such as “race,” “belonging” and “pregnant people.” She was later sent a much longer list of nearly 200 discouraged words, including “Black,” “Native American,” “disability” and “women.”
The Trump administration has tagged the terms as tied to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, which it has pledged to eliminate across federal agencies.
Former Office of Child Care head Ruth Friedman warned that the guidance is already shaping how programs behave, even before any formal enforcement. She said providers may begin stripping out services and data collection simply to avoid scrutiny.
“Grantees are sort of self-selecting out of those activities beforehand because of fear and direction they’re getting from the Office of Head Start that they can’t do these important research-based activities anymore that are important for children’s learning and that are actually required by law,” Friedman said.
The dispute is now at the center of a lawsuit filed in April by parent groups and Head Start associations in Washington, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The plaintiffs are suing Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other officials, arguing that the administration is unlawfully dismantling Head Start through administrative pressure rather than legislation.
They argue the guidance forces programs to violate the Head Start Act, which requires directors to collect and report demographic information about the families they serve. Complying with that mandate becomes difficult, they argue, if commonly used terms such as “Black,” “disability” and “socioeconomic” are effectively off-limits.
Health and Human Services officials have declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation, the AP indicated in a report.
Head Start relies largely on federal funding and has operated for decades as a cornerstone preschool and family support program. It serves babies, infants, and toddlers from low-income households, including children in foster care and families experiencing homelessness.
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Attorneys for the plaintiffs say the anti-DEI guidance has created widespread confusion among the nonprofits, school districts, and government agencies that run Head Start centers. They point out that the grant application itself includes many of the discouraged terms and explicitly asks for estimates of pregnant women and children with disabilities in the community.
“This has put me in an impossible situation,” the Wisconsin Head Start director wrote in a court filing. She said including the required information could risk her grant, while omitting it could expose her program to penalties for violating federal law.
The filings also describe the experience of a Head Start program on a Native American reservation in Washington state. Officials there were told to eliminate “all Diversity and Inclusion-related activities,” a directive that led the center to end staff training on supporting autistic children and children affected by trauma. The program was also informed that it could no longer prioritize tribal members for enrollment, despite explicit language in the Head Start Act allowing that practice. The word “Tribal” appears on the list of discouraged terms.
To some advocates, the guidance represents a broader effort to weaken a program that has long enjoyed bipartisan backing but has faced renewed criticism from some conservatives.
“They don’t believe these public programs should actually be open to serving all communities,” said Jennesa Calvo-Friedman, an attorney with the ACLU representing the plaintiffs. She said the push to police language in grant applications “is a way to gut the fundamentals of the program.”
The controversy follows earlier attempts by the Trump administration to restrict federal spending tied to DEI. Shortly after Trump took office, his budget director took an action to pause all federal grants for review, a freeze that was quickly reversed and was not meant to include Head Start. Even so, many grantees later reported delays in accessing funds, with some centers forced to close temporarily.
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The Government Accountability Office ultimately found that the funding delays violated the Impoundment Control Act, which limits a president’s authority to block congressionally approved spending.
