Propublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates power abuse. Sign up and receive the biggest story as soon as it’s published.
Three and a half weeks after Donald Trump returned to presidency, investigations by agencies handling allegations of civil rights violations at schools and universities in the country will be suspended.
At the same time, there was a dramatic decline in the number of new cases opened by the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Office. It prohibits trans athletes from participating in women’s sports and prohibits allegations of anti-Semitism and discrimination against white students.
The OCR has launched around 20 new surveys since Trump took office, sources within the department told Propublica that it is a lower number compared to similar periods in the past. For example, in the first three weeks of the Biden administration, the office opened about 110 new surveys on discrimination based on race, gender, origin or disability. Over 250 new cases were opened in the same period last year.
Historically, most investigations in the office began after students or their families filed complaints. Since Trump took office, the focus has shifted to “investigating directors.” That means the Trump administration ordered those enquiries.
“We couldn’t open (investigation) that comes from the public,” said a longtime OCR lawyer who asked not to be named because he was afraid of losing his job.
Several employees told Propublica they were told not to communicate with students, families and schools involved in the incident that was launched by previous administrators and were told to cancel scheduled meetings and mediations. . “We’ve been argued essentially,” the lawyer said.
What we see
During Donald Trump’s second presidency, Propovica will focus on areas that need scrutiny. Below are some of the issues reporters watch, and how to safely communicate with them.
We are doing something new. Helpful?
A spokesman for the education department did not respond to requests for comment.
Openings for new cases usually slow during the presidential transition, as new political appointees gain foothold and prioritize, but that is not typical for a halt. “Things have changed and changed, of course, under the first Trump administration, but we never had this gag order,” another OCR lawyer said.
The OCR shift is because Trump calls the education division “fraud” and is expected to issue an executive order that will dismantle the division. During a confirmation hearing Thursday, Trump’s Education Secretary, Linda McMahon, said he has not decided whether to cut funds to the OCR, as Republicans are asking for.
This week, the Trump administration ended more than $900 million contracts focusing primarily on educational research and data on learning and the country’s schools. The cuts came at the request of Elon Musk’s cost-cutting crew, known as government efficiency.
Since 1979, the Civil Rights sector of the sector has worked to enforce citizen differentiation laws in schools. It operates under the mission of Congress to support the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the federal law that prohibits discrimination against students due to gender or disability.
When Trump took office, around 12,000 complaints were under investigation. The largest share of pending complaints – about 6,000 people are associated with students with disabilities who feel they have been abused or unfairly rejected in schools, according to undergraduate data analysis.
Investigators were pursuing roughly 3,200 active complaints about racism, including unfair discipline and racial harassment. The additional approximately 1,000 complaints were inherent to sexual harassment or sexual violence, the analysis found. The rest concerns various discrimination claims.
Students and families often rely on OCR after they feel that concerns have not been addressed by the district. This process is free. This means access to disability services and improving school safety, even if families cannot afford to pursue lawsuits from their lawyers or receive relief.
Once the OCR finds evidence of discrimination, it can force school districts and universities to change their policies or provide services to students.
For example, last fall, the OCR concluded that rural Pennsylvania school districts were unable to protect black students from racist provocation and harassment by white groups. White students from the Norwin School District handed out photos of themselves labelled “Chury Kids Crubb,” wearing Confederate flag clothes, telling black students to “pick up cotton,” and sought to say to them. They used varieties of praise, investigators found. District officials initially said that there was no problem with the behavior of white students and did not believe that the students created a racially hostile environment.
However, the OCR findings and corrective actions required districts to investigate years of racial harassment complaints and be trained in how to better deal with racial conflicts in the district.
The power of the department to hold students accountable when they can’t protect them and provide relief in real time makes the job urgent while students are still in school, civil rights lawyers and department staff said .
Of the approximately 600 employees in the education sector, approximately 600 people work at OCR, either at Washington headquarters or at 12 regional offices. At least 74 department employees are undergoing diversity training, according to Sheria Smith, an OCR lawyer and president of the Federal Region 252, a union representing employees in the unmanaged education department. However, he was placed on administrative leave.
Smith said 15 workers on vacation came from OCR. She said 50 new education department employees were fired Wednesday.
“One thing that’s obvious for now is that we’re completely disrupting the services we provide and we’re hearing from our stakeholders,” Smith said. A complaint they filed about how their primary school handled sexual assault on their children.
“It is the members of the masses who are struggling with these confusion,” she said.
Employees from another department who said many students’ complaints were urgent, who asked them not to be identified because they were afraid of losing their jobs.
“Many of these students are in crisis,” the employee said. “They are hoping for some sort of intervention to bring that student back to school and graduate or get accommodation.”
According to employees, there are students who need help right now. “And now, the federal government literally does nothing.”
The new leadership in the department has publicly said it plans to expand the types of discrimination the department investigates. Among the cases under investigation, is whether all gendered toilets at Denver High School discriminate against girls. The OCR acting chief took the extraordinary step of announcing the investigation in a press release. This is something that previous administrations did not normally do.
“Let me be clear: it’s a new day for America, and under President Trump, the OCR will not tolerate any kind of discrimination,” says OCR’s proxy trainer Craig to investigate civil rights staff. He said in a press release that he had instructed. This is because the bathrooms at Denver Public Schools “appear to be a direct violation of the civil rights of female students in the district.”
Denver school spokesman Scott Prebble called the survey “unprecedented.” He said, “This is not the first all-gender bathroom we have in school, but this is the first time that an investigation has been opened by OCR.” There are other girls’ toilets at the school. Students were lobbyed by school administrators and only one person was converted into toilets for all genders.
The trainer took another tough approach Wednesday when he announced a new survey of high school athletics groups in Minnesota and California. The administration has responded to executive orders that Trump signed to ban transgender women and girls from participating in women, and has replied with the alleged violation of Title IX against other institutions, preventing gender-based discrimination in education programs. Two similar investigations had begun. Sports.
The state “can freely engage in signing all the meaningless virtues they desire, but at the end of the day they must comply with federal law,” the trainer said.
The OCR also decided to investigate complaints filed in August by the Equality Protection Project, a conservative nonprofit that advocates discrimination against white students. The Biden administration was not based on complaints, but leaders from the new department decided to proceed with the investigation within days. The complaint alleges that the Ithaca City School District in New York has excluded white students by holding an event called The Student of Color Summit.
Professor William Jacobson of Cornell University, who founded the Equality Protection Project, said his organization has filed around 60 complaints over the years, some of which are under investigation. He asked if he thought the management changes would help him track Ithaca’s complaints quickly, and said, “I don’t know how it hurts.”
“We want uniform enforcement and hope that the division is more offensive than it has been,” Jacobson said. “If there is a program that excludes black students, we want the department to go on after that, but I don’t know of such a program.”
Officials at Ithaca School declined to comment.
A dangerous national investment in seafood cost Alaska millions and how to leave a crisis-inducing fishing town
Katherine Ramon, who oversaw OCR under former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, has questioned the current administration’s approach to issuing press releases to announce the investigation. One presentation included a quote from a former college athlete who ran against transgender women in sports.
“It’s very political and suggests a conclusion before the OCR conducted the investigation,” Ramon said. The agency is considered to be a neutral fact-detector, she said.
The agency appears to have ended its long-standing practice of publishing a list of institutions being investigated and what kind of discrimination is alleged. It was last updated on January 14th, the week before Trump took office.
We continue to report on the U.S. Department of Education. Are you a former or current education employee? Are you a student or a school employee? Will the department change be affected? You can reach the tip line of the signal on 917-512-0201. Be as specific, detailed and clear as possible.
Mollie Simon contributed to the research.
