Along with a series of other associations, the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) has communicated to the General Services Administration (GSA) its deep concerns about GSA’s proposal to alter the requirements for institutions to become eligible to receive federal assistance of any kind. This is the government-wide “System for Award Management” that GSA manages.
GSA has proposed that all would-be federal recipients must certify that, among other things, they are following the Trump administration’s policies, in addition to existing law and regulations, relating to anti-discrimination. This proposal quickly brings back into focus the many complicated and problematic issues surrounding the administration’s policies on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), and the landmark 2023 Students for Fair Admissions Supreme Court ruling, whose principles the administration has applied to a variety of other contexts.
This overarching proposed certification would affect institutions in different ways, given that various states, and colleges within those states, have adopted differing policies concerning DEI and related issues, and that numerous considerations enter into colleges’ actions in this domain. State law and policy also structure many institutions’ decisions, and often in different directions from those taken in other states, not to mention federal policy.
In AACC’s view, the GSA correspondence effectively conveys the primary concerns that the association believes are most relevant across its sector. There are many other reasons — some procedural, some policy-oriented and some constitutional — why AACC believes that the proposed policies should be rejected. One point forcefully made in the correspondence is that institutions are and have been compliant with all aspects of federal law, including those addressed in the new certification. This fact makes the revised certifications unnecessary and substantively problematic. A major reason is that, embedded in the certification, colleges make definitive statements concerning administrative (including “subregulatory”) policies that can and will change.
Institutions or other parties may wish to submit their comments to GSA. The deadline is March 30. Please contact AACC’s government relations team with any questions.
