Colorado's Cherry Creek Schools Wrote a Race-Based Teacher Pledge Into Its Union Contract. A New Federal Complaint Calls It Illegal

Cherry Creek Schools, a 52,000-student district in the Denver suburbs, put a racial promise in writing. Its contract with the teachers' union commits the district to "the intentional recruitment of highly qualified educators of color" and to helping those teachers keep their jobs and move up. On Monday, the parents' group Defending Education filed a federal civil rights complaint saying that promise breaks the law.

The complaint went to the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights. It says the district, which runs 66 schools, is discriminating by race in a program paid for with federal money, in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection. Fox News Digital first reported it.

What the contract says

The language sits in Policy 4109, titled "Educators of Color Declaration," inside the district's 2026-2027 Negotiated Agreement with the Cherry Creek Education Association. Defending Education attached the full 130-page agreement to its complaint. The policy says both sides "share a commitment to ensuring the District's professional workforce represents and reflects the rich racial and ethnic diversity of its students and their families," and that they "recognize the student demographics of Cherry Creek Schools are not represented" among the teachers.

So the two sides "commit to the intentional recruitment of highly qualified educators of color." They promise "a significant and concerted effort to retain educators of color currently employed by the district and facilitate their advancement within the District and the Association's leadership." Then the policy reaches into the whole contract: "all policies in this agreement shall reflect Cherry Creek School District core values by grounding the work of negotiations in diversity, equity, and inclusion."

Turn one page and the same agreement says the opposite. Policy 4001, on the books since 1981, says hiring, retention and "opportunities for advancement" must happen "without favor" and "without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin or handicap." It's like a store that hangs a "we treat every customer the same" sign on the door while the manager's handbook says to go looking for certain customers by skin color.

Why the group says it's illegal

Defending Education's argument is simple: hiring and promotion are zero-sum. When a district goes out of its way to recruit, keep and promote teachers of one race, someone else loses the job or the promotion. The complaint leans on the Supreme Court's 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which struck down race-based college admissions and called admissions "zero-sum," and on older rulings that ban "racial balancing" and quotas.

The group also says the 1981 equal-opportunity clause can't rescue the newer policy. Quoting a federal court ruling, the complaint says a boilerplate clause that "merely restates already-existing" anti-discrimination rules "cannot substantively operate to save" a policy that is otherwise invalid.

"Cherry Creek Schools has written racial preferences directly into its teachers' contract," Sarah Parshall Perry, Defending Education's vice president and senior legal fellow, told Fox News Digital. "That's not diversity; it's discrimination, and it is precisely what Title VI and the Fourteenth Amendment forbid." She added: "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."

Adopted before the ruling, kept after it

The timing is the part other outlets skipped. The policy was proposed in contract talks on Nov. 22, 2022, and the school board adopted it on June 12, 2023. Seventeen days later, the Supreme Court handed down its admissions ruling. The district kept the pledge anyway, and it took effect that August.

Then came June 8, 2026. That day, Trump's Education Department opened investigations into the district over a long list of race-based programs: clubs that allegedly exclude students by race, teachers allegedly told to consider race in class assignments and academic help, a teacher training restricted by race, and a "Voices of Color Committee" that allegedly gives some parents preferred access. "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," said Kimberly Richey, the department's assistant secretary for civil rights.

The same day, according to the agreement's own dates, the board adopted a new round of changes to the teachers' contract. Policy 4109 stayed in. Under federal investigation for race-based programs, the district renewed a race-based pledge for its own staff.

What the district says

Cherry Creek did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment Monday. When the federal probe opened in June, a district spokesperson told CBS Colorado: "We strongly disagree with the characterization of District programming." An Education Department spokesperson told Fox the department "does not confirm complaints."

What happens next

The Office for Civil Rights now decides whether to open a case. If it does and finds a violation the district won't fix, the law gives Washington two big levers: start cutting off the district's federal money, or send the case to the Justice Department, where Harmeet Dhillon's Civil Rights Division enforces the same civil rights law.

This isn't a one-off. Earlier this month Defending Education filed the same kind of complaint against Kalamazoo Public Schools in Michigan over race-based hiring. The group is going after a playbook, not just one district: diversity pledges tucked into union contracts, where most parents never look.

The bottom line: Cherry Creek can promise to hire "without regard to race" or promise to recruit, keep and promote teachers by race. Its contract promises both. Now the federal government gets asked which one counts.