When the Trump administration announced last week that about half of the U.S. Department of Education staff would be fired, it cut down the San Francisco Regional Chapter of the Civil Rights Office, which is responsible for providing protection against discrimination to state students.
The California office handled the inflated caseload of students, families and school staff. Suspicion of unequal academic instruction for students with disabilities. Allegations of sexual assault on campus; claims of unfair discipline met students of color. A suspected bullying of LGBTQ+ students.
The cases include claims of reverse discrimination, such as the unfair or illegal benefits offered to racial or ethnic minorities.
About 1,500 California lawsuits are pending, according to multiple layoff-off lawyers at the Bay Area office. They are able to receive messages about the case, but were unable to reply after receiving the layoff notification, despite being technically adopted until March 21st.
Pending cases include open investigations, investigations under mediation, cases resolved under supervision to ensure that the contract is held, and complaints being investigated by civil rights attorneys who have not yet been acted on.
It is unclear what will happen in that caseload and ongoing litigation. Six other regional offices in Dallas, Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, New York and Philadelphia have been closed. Four remain open: Seattle, Denver, Kansas City and Washington DC
“The department has hundreds of fewer staff than it needs to work effectively. Katherine Ramon, who headed the Civil Rights Office under President Obama and Biden, said: “Millions of students will not enjoy the civil rights protections Congress has assured them.”
About a third of the work in the California office was involved in either following enquiries or providing training. So, it will help parents, students, teachers and administrators understand the legal rights and options for pursuing a lawsuit, San Francisco office staff said. Questions about civil rights issues often came via email or phone, the lawyer said, and they aimed to resolve them without any investigations or legal action that were elicited.
Still, the 50-person Bay Area-based staff were dealing with growing caseloads despite gradually shrinking by 25% over the past 20 years.
Last week’s layoffs were quickly challenged in court as an illegal and critical service that was at risk. The administration argues that students will not be shortened.
“The Civil Rights Office will continue to investigate complaints and actively enforce federal civil rights laws,” said Maddie Biederman, deputy director of communications for the education department. The layoff process adds that it will comply with federal regulations and employee union contracts.
Newly confirmed Education Secretary Linda McMahon also said that essentially and legally necessary duties will be carried out. She also defended President Trump’s plans to shut down the Department of Education and move some of its functions elsewhere. “He stripped bureaucracy from education, so more money flows to the US,” McMahon said in an interview with Fox News Tuesday night.
A story from within
Recent and current staff members of the Civil Rights Office have explained the disruptive operation as the Trump administration took over control on January 20th. Discrimination cases are frozen or ignored, and priorities change instantly.
They said it is common for the new administration to suspend agency actions while introducing new appointees and priorities. However, there have been wise exceptions in the past, including the previous Trump administration.
When Biden took office, for example, “Our standard disorder cases weren’t frozen. They’re still moving, right? They’re not politicized, so they can just continue,” said Katie Darm, a former deputy director who resigned from March 7th in his Washington office.
There were also exceptions that could be given to particularly vulnerable students and cases where they needed to resolve quickly. And during the management transition, staff can communicate with families and alert them of delayed or coordinated timelines, she said.
But in recent weeks, anxiety has skyrocketed among people with pending cases, the lawyer said.
“I got an email from my parents last week. They’ll say, ‘Do you still see my case of my middle schooler being harassed for their race?’ or ‘My child hasn’t received their special education accommodation?'” said a San Francisco Civil Rights Office lawyer. “Parents may be saying their children have suicidal thoughts and they couldn’t reply.”
After confirmation of McMahon’s Senate, most of the freeze was lifted.
But on Friday, the National Youth Law Center filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of students and families across the country trying to reverse the education sector’s “recent decision to effectively suspend civil rights complaints investigations.”
“To abandon thousands of claims, while we see an increase in bullying, harassment and discrimination, we send a frightening message that not only violates the very mission of the Ministry of Education, but also does not need to develop a safe and welcome environment for schools.”
Many cases in Southern California resolved during the Biden administration should be under surveillance, but are tasked with suffering, the current lawyer at the California office said he spoke anonymously because he was not allowed to speak to the media.
A department spokesperson tried to ease concerns by saying that the office could allow the office to operate or skip several steps of the case more quickly through the case with a “quick resolution process.”
Insiders say that quick resolution is not new and the department cannot force those involved in the case to agree to it. They said, it is most effective in a simple and simple case.
Neil McCrusky, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, said the workload needs to be examined.
“The Department of Education is almost certainly too big, and cutting staff is probably wise everywhere,” McCluskey said. “I also watched OCR [the Office for Civil Rights] It expands past investigations that go far beyond specific complaints, examines the agency as a whole, and significantly expands unnecessarily expanding workloads. If there are not many ways to make OCR more efficient, that’s very surprising. ”
One office lawyer in San Francisco agreed – to some extent. “In the past, we’ve been told to take on these huge cases. This is a specific bullying issue, and it was being asked not to the entire school or district that has systemic issues,” the lawyer said. “It’s not that we didn’t do well. But when we’re all gone, they’re going to get even worse.”
Priority shift
The Trump administration is highlighting new priorities, including focusing on anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism falls under the category of federally protected discrimination based on “shared ancestors.” Shared ancestors also include Islamophobia.
“In our office, even in the last two months, we never felt the pressure to pursue some kind of discrimination and other types of discrimination,” said a San Francisco lawyer. “But it was very clear that Washington, D.C.’s priorities focused on anti-Semitism, ignoring Arabs and Muslims. Protecting one group, but protecting the other groups, is not a fair and equal application of the law.”
It is not uncommon for governments to change from one government to another with policy instructions. Obama focused on the rights of victims of sexual assault at the university. Trump redirected efforts to ensure that those accused of assault have undergone legitimate proceedings. Biden has made it a group that must be protected from discrimination and provide equal access to LGBTQ+ students. The current Trump administration wants a case of gender that can be seen through two gender-only lenses: male and female.
The rulemaking process is long and requires one government to essentially enforce the rules of the previous administration. This is a process where Trump’s team appears to be ready to circumvent his second term by issuing an executive order.
The problem before Trump
Even before the new administration took office there was a serious backlog. Some cases took years to conclude, including those that included allegations of shared ancestor discrimination at the University of California, which opened in 2022 and closed in December.
Trump has not elected the Civil Rights Office, but has accused federal employees of not doing their jobs and not appearing for work in general and without evidence.
“When I got there… I said, ‘Okay, we’re where the bloat is, where is the bureaucracy, and let’s start,” McMahon said in an interview last week. ”
“So many programs are really good,” she added, “We wanted to keep all the right people, good people, so layoffs wouldn’t be harmful.
Lawyers reject negative traits of their work, saying that caseloads have doubled and tripled over the past decade, especially as offices are more politicized and better known at the top, bringing more investigations and claims.
Democrats also filed a complaint. Los Angeles activists were furious when the office told the LA Unified School District that its Black Student Achievements Plan had to be set up to support the district’s lowest racial groups and open to all students. Federal lawyers advised the district that the recent Supreme Court decision to end racial preferences did not propose an alternative.
Ken Marcus, who headed the department’s Civil Rights Office under President George W. Bush, said during Trump’s first term, staff cuts could result in fewer cases being pursued. Instead, the office could pursue aggressive, well-known actions, including the recent $400 million suspension of a federal contract from multiple agencies to Columbia University over anti-Semitism allegations. UCLA, UC Berkeley and USC are also undergoing federal scrutiny for alleged anti-Semitism.
Separately, “there is a possibility that civil rights enforcement will increase at the state level,” Marcus added.
However, the flood of the incident suggests that the state was either unwilling or unwilling to implement civil rights enforcement. Most families can’t afford to buy lawyers for this type of legal challenge, Darm said.
“This is a free resource that can be used to ensure that the rights of students and families are protected,” she said. “If they don’t, they’re rarely there if there were other options.”
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