A little-known civil rights office at the Department of Education, charged with helping resolve student complaints across the country about discrimination and inclusion of people with disabilities, has been gutted by the Trump administration and now faces a backlog of issues, a changing workforce and an unclear mandate.
Even those who work there say they don’t trust the agency to help their children.
“It was a black hole — no staffing, no rhyme or reason for what they were doing, and no mission to actually enforce civil rights laws,” said a longtime attorney for the office. At this point, the employee won’t even come to the office “if I have a problem with my student or child.”
The Office for Civil Rights was established to help provide equal educational opportunity for all students and to protect students from discrimination based on race, ethnicity, sex, age, and disability status by holding schools and colleges that receive federal funds accountable.
The office was envisioned as an alternative to costly and time-consuming litigation, seen as a last resort for many families when other avenues — negotiations with teachers, school leaders, school districts — have been exhausted.
However, more than a half-dozen attorneys who worked for the office or left this year said the office was hampered by layoffs during the Trump administration, which eliminated nearly 80% of its staff and created a backlog of thousands of cases. The department is trying to bring back some furloughed employees, in part to address the backlog.
The source, who spoke to CNN anonymously for fear of retaliation, also said the office has shifted away from its original mission to prioritize policies that promote DEI and allow transgender athletes to compete, while focusing on investigating anti-Semitism.
Among the unresolved cases, according to staff who remain, are a student with a disability who said they were not allowed to go on field trips because the school could not accommodate their special needs, and a girl who said she was forced to take classes with another student accused of sexual harassment because the school did not address the issue.
Another attorney with the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) said: “I see hundreds of cases in my office where no one is working, no one is assigned, no one responds to inquiries, no investigation is done, and there is no enforcement.”
March 12, U.S. Department of Education headquarters in Washington, DC. -Nathan Howard/Reuters
“When a student experiences racial discrimination in the classroom, when a school denies disability-related accommodations, when a survivor reports sexual harassment but no action is taken, or when an English learner student cannot get the language services they need, these situations cannot wait,” said attorney Mary Rohmiller, who recently left OCR after more than five years there.
Julie Hartman, press secretary for legal affairs at the Department of Education, told CNN in a statement, “The Trump administration is repositioning OCR as what it is meant to be: a law enforcement agency rather than a social justice advocacy arm of the federal government.”
The department pointed to a broader effort by the Trump administration to censor university policies and campus speech while threatening to cut off federal funding. This resulted in settlements with several universities, including Columbia University and Northwestern University.
“These protocols eradicate DEI and unconstitutional racial preferences, acknowledge sexuality as a biological reality in physical and intimate spaces, and take steps to consistently apply discipline policies to ensure all students enjoy a safe learning environment,” Hartman said.
Last week, embattled staff at the Office for Civil Rights got what they considered welcome news. The Department of Education has informed employees who were fired earlier this year and then placed on administrative leave amid an ongoing court battle that they will return to work later this month. The email, sent to about 250 employees, said they needed to address existing caseloads.
But the reprieve may be short-lived.
When asked about the staffing rollback, Hartman said the move was “temporary” and that the department would continue to defend the firings in court.
The backlog keeps growing
While OCR backlogs are common across many governments, the Trump administration has seen an increase in the number of cases awaiting action.
As of this week, about 24,000 complaints to the Office for Civil Rights remained unresolved, and the Biden administration ended with 16,500 cases pending. An OCR source said the current backlog is even higher, but the number of complaints has dropped by more than 20%. Sources attributed the decline to the Trump administration sending a message that it was not prioritizing civil rights.
Once one of the largest federal civil rights agencies, OCR became one of the Department of Education’s heaviest layoffs in March as part of a DOGE-led effort to shrink the federal government.
The Trump administration closed seven of twelve regional offices and laid off nearly half the staff. The office’s staff dropped from more than 550 to more than 300 people. More layoffs occurred during the government shutdown in October, with multiple sources estimating that about 100 employees remained.
On April 29, in Washington, DC, after the U.S. Department of Education held a “Protect Students, Empower Education Rally and Press Conference”, the shadow of the U.S. Department of Education was reflected in the windows of a building. —Pete Kiehart for The Washington Post/Getty Images
Additionally, before this year there were already four executive directors, an important role that typically handles more intensive policy cases. Two sources told CNN there is now just one law enforcement director for the entire country.
“No one is doing any of this work,” said a third attorney in the office, “and it looks like we’re really going backwards and we’re really trying to undo all the protections that provide adequate educational opportunities for all students.”
Several employees who were placed on administrative leave told CNN they felt like they had been in “purgatory” for months. While they are still receiving wages, they are prohibited from working or responding to requests from family members seeking help or updates on their cases.
For those who remain, typical investigator caseloads have increased from 35 cases per attorney to more than 80 cases. Some attorneys say some cases simply languish or are ignored.
“It makes me very anxious for the families who haven’t heard from us,” a fourth attorney said.
“These are real people; these are real Americans who want and need us to resolve all cases,” the attorney added. “This is the life of children. These are desperate parents.”
The office is also dismissing cases at an accelerated pace, court documents show. About 7,000 cases were dismissed under the Trump administration, hundreds more than during the same period last year under Biden.
At the same time, the veteran attorney said there has been a “huge shift in priorities” in the cases the Office of Civil Rights is taking and investigating. He said political appointees are pushing the president’s “pet projects” while career federal employees continue to handle basic discrimination cases with fewer resources.
The Education Department in March directed OCR staff to immediately prioritize anti-Semitism investigations that began during the Biden administration, but another source within the department countered that the move tied up resources or distracted from other cases awaiting OCR action.
waiting students
OCR does not like to go to court, which can be an expensive and time-consuming option for schools and families, and OCR prefers to act quickly. Our goal is to complete most cases within a few months to lessen the impact on students while they await resolution.
“Students don’t have to wait years for OCR to step in and make sure they have a safe environment and equal educational opportunities,” said Rohmiller, a former OCR employee. “Children are harmed by these delays. They need action now. But right now, too many of these cases are being dropped by the wayside.”
An Atlanta-area mother says she’s been waiting for months for the Office for Civil Rights to resolve her case.
Her 12-year-old daughter, who has autism and is hypersensitive to sudden loud noises, had an Individual Education Plan that took into account her disability and stipulated that she needed to leave the school building before the fire alarm went off, which was particularly dysfunctional for her.
But this past September, during a week at a new school, the mother told CNN that when the fire alarm went off, she received a panicked text message from her daughter saying she wasn’t allowed to leave early.
The mother, who asked not to be identified because the case is ongoing, jumped in her car and headed to the middle school. When she arrived, she saw her daughter trapped in the whirlpool. As they worked together to calm down, the little girl missed an hour of class.
“Her face was red and swollen. She was crying. I could tell she was embarrassed.”
According to the mother, the school said it did not have the resources to escort her daughter out before the alarm sounded. Instead, the school gave her a fire drill schedule so she could stop working and do it herself.
This is a routine she may need to maintain for a while.
“I think OCR might be overwhelmed right now,” she told CNN. “I’m not hopeful.”
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