Department of Justice – ��

Splitting Up Special Ed and Civil Rights Will Dilute Services, Experts Say

Linda Jacobson — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 10:30:00 +0000

As a special education advocate in Oklahoma, Lucia Frohling handles about 40 cases per year in which schools reduce class time for students with disabilities, often for behavior issues or serious medical conditions.

When she negotiates with school officials, she often leans on a from the federal government that such “informal removals” — like repeatedly asking a parent to pick up their child early — could violate a student’s rights.

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“They’re denying them access to education,” she said. Parents need that guidance, she added, “because most families can’t afford attorneys and years of litigation.”

Lucia Frohling, left, is a special education advocate in Oklahoma and the mom of three children. Two of them, Dawson, center, and Ansley, have learning disabilities. (Courtesy of Lucia Frohling)

That Biden-era document was a of the two offices within the U.S. Department of Education that oversee special education and civil rights and drew attention to that had long gone under the radar. But with Secretary Linda McMahon’s announcement last week that staff in those offices will be sent to separate agencies — special education to the Department of Health and Human Services and the Office for Civil Rights to the Department of Justice — educators and attorneys worry the split will lead to crossed wires for students with disabilities.

“When school districts have to navigate rules from separate federal departments, it will make it even more challenging to manage a single student’s behavior,” said Jessica Saum, a special education administrator in Arkansas’ Cabot Public Schools, north of Little Rock. Special education programs and civil rights enforcement “are completely intertwined in practice. I do not see how schools and districts can cleanly separate a student’s behavioral needs from their civil rights.”

Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican who chairs the education committee, has promised to schedule a vote next month to from moving special education to HHS. Parents say they’re concerned that their children’s disabilities would be viewed from a medical perspective.

“I don’t want my son to be fixed. I want him to be educated,” said Courtney Hansen, a Colorado mom whose son has Down Syndrome. Like Frohling, she was among the hundreds of parents and advocates who joined a with department staff to voice their opinions on the administration’s plans to relocate oversight of special education. A medical model, Hansen said, is “what the disability rights movement has been trying to get away from for the past 50 years.”

Courtney Hansen and her two children, Cora and Troy, met with members of Congress in March to advocate for students with disabilities. (Courtesy of Courtney Hansen)

But Cassidy, who has been critical of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., still wouldn’t keep special education and civil rights in the same agency. He thinks the Department of Labor is a better home for special education.

In addition to the guidance on discipline, the department’s special education officials worked with OCR in 2016 on a clarifying that students with ADHD were eligible for services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act or Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.

Until then, those students were often “overlooked because they were bright, quiet, passing classes or not creating obvious discipline problems,” said Jon Thomas, a Fairfax, Virginia, counselor who works with students who have ADHD. The condition, he said, “rarely shows up as one clean problem. It’s a kid who’s behind in reading, getting written up for impulsivity, leaning on a parent to hold the homework together, and missing instruction because nobody connected the dots. Split the agencies, and you split that dot-connecting job in half.”

‘Sharper teeth’

The with HHS and DOJ were the latest attempts by the Trump administration to break up and ultimately phase out the Education Department. The DOJ would also handle complaints related to . In her about the move, McMahon said the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services and the Office for Civil Rights will “continue to partner together.” She promised that the move would “break down the bureaucratic barriers and strengthen the coordination of resources.”

Some advocates agree with her. Marilyn Muller, a whose daughter has dyslexia, is “cautiously optimistic” that moving oversight of special education and civil rights out of the Education Department would “finally deliver real accountability,” she . “Too many families have waited years for states and local districts to follow the law.”

The Department of Justice, she wrote, has “sharper teeth.”

But that’s what some parents and advocates worry about. Relationships with district officials over special education services are already adversarial. In the District of Columbia Public Schools, an OCR investigation recently concluded that parents were often forced to sue to get services for their children. Putting DOJ, the federal government’s primary law enforcement agency, in charge could make the process even less collaborative, Hansen said.

Others say it’s unlikely that the DOJ will make progress on a backlog of OCR complaints when it, too, has experienced .

“There has already been a dramatic drop in the number of cases OCR is taking and resolving,” particularly disability complaints, said Matt Cohen, a Chicago-based civil rights attorney who specializes in cases involving students with disabilities. “As would be true when any organization is uncoupled, collaboration, coordination and consistency will be far more difficult.”

Among the complaints OCR is acting on, officials that it’s investigating the New Home Independent School District in Texas, south of Lubbock, for canceling a life skills class for students with disabilities. In May, it opened an investigation into the for its plans to move some services for students with disabilities to a central location this fall rather than keep them in general education classrooms.

OCR also spent a year probing the D.C. Public Schools’ special education system, but a from the Government Accountability Office, a watchdog agency, found that OCR dismissed 90% of the 7,000 cases it says it resolved between March and September last year.

OCR’s most shows it received 22,687 complaints in fiscal year 2024, with more than 8,400 focusing on disabilities. But the public has no way to know how many complaints OCR, under McMahon’s leadership, is currently investigating because the website with that information since the Trump administration took office.

‘Change does need to happen’

Even before staff departures, the DOJ’s civil rights division “traditionally handled a much lower volume of cases,” said Johnathan Smith, managing director of education and federal strategic advocacy at the National Center for Youth Law. He previously served as a deputy assistant attorney in that division. “It is not clear that there is the infrastructure to meaningfully handle such a high volume of complaints.”

Rob Harris, a Colorado father filed several complaints with OCR during the first Trump and Biden administrations, because his daughter, who is blind, wasn’t receiving services written into her individualized education program, like a cane and materials in Braille. But OCR never took any action.

He told �� that he “ended up bailing the school system” and now homeschools his children, while also serving as a “facilitator” in meetings between parents and educators to develop students’ special education plans, especially those related to job coaching and transition plans after high school.

“I really want to make sure that students receive the services that they’re entitled to,” he said.

That’s what he when he gave his three-minute statement on the January call with parents and advocates. Like several parents and advocates who participated, he said no one voiced support for moving oversight of special education to HHS.

“It might not be the change that we wanted,” he said, “but change does need to happen.”

Justice Dept. Probes 3 Michigan Districts Over LGBTQ-Related Curriculum

Linda Jacobson — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 21:34:19 +0000

The question of whether parents could opt their children out of sex education lessons was a major point of controversy last year when the Michigan Department of Education updated its health education standards.

Now the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating whether three districts gave parents advance notice of lessons pertaining to sexual orientation and gender identity so their children could be excused. Officials are also investigating whether the districts received any complaints “regarding sex-segregated bathrooms” and other spaces, indicating that the federal government is committed to ensuring “the safety, dignity, and innocence of our youngest citizens.”

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On Wednesday, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon sent letters to the superintendents of the Detroit, Lansing and Godfrey-Lee school districts, asking for all materials that reference sex and LGBTQ-related terms as well as any complaints or inquiries the districts might have received related to those issues.

“This Department of Justice is fiercely committed to ending the growing trend of local school authorities embedding sexuality and gender ideology in every aspect of public education,” she said in a statement.

The letters to the district’s superintendents signal the Justice Department’s willingness to aggressively enforce last year’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in in which the justices sided with a group of parents who argued they should be able to opt their elementary school children out of lessons related to LGBTQ-themed storybooks for religious reasons. Michigan’s standards, Dhillon wrote, could be at odds with the court’s decision.

If the districts don’t agree to the department’s demands, they could be at risk of losing federal funding, she wrote. Including school nutrition funds and Medicaid, the Detroit Public Schools Community District, for example, receives over $200 million, according to Jeremy Vidito, chief financial officer.

Officials with Detroit and Lansing districts did not return phone calls or emails, but in an email, Arnetta Thompson, superintendent of the Godfrey-Lee district, called the investigation a “standard review process.”

“We are fully cooperating with this inquiry and will provide any requested information,” she said. “The district is not facing any charges or findings of wrongdoing. We remain committed to complying with all applicable federal, state and local laws and have consistently operated in accordance with those laws.”

In a statement, Michigan state Superintendent Glenn Maleyko said his department supports the three districts that “have been targeted” by the DOJ and said Dhillon wrongly characterized the health guidelines as state requirements.

Parents, he said, ”retain the right to decide whether their children should participate in sex education instruction. And state officials will work with the districts to “select a curriculum that best supports the needs of their students, consistent with state standards and guidelines.”

The investigations reflect the Trump administration’s parental rights agenda, whose nearly singular focus has been to restrict lessons or policies related to gender identity. In a last September, Attorney General Pam Bondi said state and local officials have “ignored, dismissed and even retaliated against concerned parents who speak out against these morally and factually bankrupt ideologies.” One of President Donald Trump’s earliest rejected the Biden administration’s efforts to extend Title IX protections to transgender students. But some experts say it’s highly unusual for the Department of Justice to get involved in matters related to curriculum.

“These investigations depart from longstanding DOJ practice of not dictating or interfering with school curriculum,” said Johnathan Smith, chief of staff and general counsel at the National Center for Youth Law. A former deputy assistant attorney in the DOJ’s civil rights division, he said previously, the department “intentionally avoided” those issues.

Brian Dittmeier, director of LGBTQI+ Equality at the National Women’s Law Center, added that the DOJ’s probe is a “blatant attempt to discourage inclusive education” and takes the Mahmoud decision too far. While that case focused specifically on books that the Montgomery County schools in Maryland added to its reading curriculum in the early grades, DOJ is looking at “content in any class” for pre-K through 12th grade.

But Jonathan Butcher, acting director of the Center for Education Policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the DOJ’s action appears “consistent with the degree of parent empowerment under Mahmoud.”

“Parents need a level of trust that schools will reflect their values, or at least not contradict their values,” he said. It’s likely, he added, that other districts will see similar investigations in line with “the Education Department and White House’s goals to protect students from explicit material.”

‘Capacity issue’

The fact that the DOJ is involved instead of the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights could reflect a “capacity issue,” Dittmeier said.

In December, Education Secretary Linda McMahon recalled more than 250 OCR employees to handle a growing backlog of complaints. They had been on administrative leave as a result of her attempts to downsize the department.

While McMahon has moved to shift Education Department offices to other agencies, she has not yet announced where OCR would go. in Congress, however, would move OCR to the Justice Department. The Education and Justice departments also formed a last April to speed up Title IX investigations and “use the full power of the law to remedy any violation of women’s civil rights,” Bondi said in a statement.

While Detroit, with almost 49,000 students, is the state’s largest district, it’s unclear whether any specific complaints triggered the investigations. Lansing, the state capital, declared itself last year.

In 2024, former state Superintendent Michael Rice honored Godfrey-Lee, a small, 1,700-student district south of Grand Rapids, for the state’s 21st Century Model School Library award. He recognized media specialist Harry Coffill for including “diverse books” on the shelves.

The letters to each district ask for an extensive list of materials, dating back to 2023, that include “slideshows, presentations, imagery, posters, signage, recordings and handouts” that reference a variety of terms like “gender spectrum,” “gender expression,” “puberty blockers” and “transitioning.”

Dhillon wants leaders to turn over any forms, notices or permission slips that demonstrate how the districts notify parents when a lesson references sex and gender. She also asked for detailed records of any complaints or questions from parents related to topics such as “queer culture,” “LGBTQIA+,” “Pride Month” or “drag queen.”

note that parents should receive prior notification of sex education classes and curriculum and that they have a right to “opt out their child from all or some” of those lessons. Lansing’s related to controversial issues, for example, says schools will “honor a written request” for students to be excused “for specified reasons.”

State Superintendent Maleyko said the “breadth and scope” of Dhillon’s requests “place a significant administrative burden on local districts and risk diverting time and resources away from the core mission of educating students.”

Justice Dept. Action Leaves Feds Without Key Tool to Prove Bias in Schools

Linda Jacobson — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 21:10:43 +0000

Discrimination doesn’t have to be intentional to cause harm.

That’s the principle the federal government has long used to investigate and remedy disparities based on race, color or national origin in education and other programs receiving federal funds. But no longer, according to a Attorney General Pam Bondi posted earlier this week.

The regulation does not “sufficiently serve the public interest” and violates President Trump’s about promoting meritocracy, she wrote. The law, she said, “promises that people are treated as individuals, not components of a particular race or group.”

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The provision stems from Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination in education, housing, health care and transportation. Historically, federal agencies used the law to warn districts that they could lose federal funds if they didn’t comply with orders to desegregate schools. Under the Department of Justice rule, officials could use data to determine whether discrimination exists.

In a 2014 case, for example, an investigation in New Hampshire showed that under the Manchester district’s policy for assigning students to Advanced Placement and honors courses, Black students were enrolled in those classes at far lower rates.

While Title VI applies to multiple programs and activities, from access to advanced classes to enrollment procedures, school discipline has been at the forefront of the debate over using data to prove discrimination exists. consistently shows that Black students are disciplined at higher rates than their peers, disparities that districts have been under pressure to address.

Bondi’s move to rescind the 50-year-old rule means that the government will no longer hold schools responsible for any neutral policies or behavior that, according to data, negatively affect students of a certain race or nationality. The action, without offering any opportunity for public comment, aligns with the Trump administration’s push to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives from the nation’s schools. Fear of a federal investigation, conservatives argue, can interfere with districts’ ability to manage their schools.

Others argue rescinding the rule decreases the chances all students will receive an equal education.

“This has real-world implications,” said GeDá Jones Herbert, chief legal counsel at Brown’s Promise, a nonprofit that supports efforts to create more integrated schools. Discrimination, she said, isn’t always obvious. “Sometimes we can’t find the fire, and the smoke is enough.”

A group of former Department of Justice attorneys, who left the administration in part because of its education policies, criticized the move.

“We ensured children could attend accessible and integrated schools while protecting them from abuse at the hands of police or the juvenile justice system,” they wrote in . “We left because this administration turned the division’s core mission upside down, largely abandoning its duty to protect civil rights.”

The shift in policy comes as the Education Department calls back over 250 civil rights staff, who have been on administrative leave, to handle a mounting backlog of cases. A January , issued before Trump took office, showed that the volume of complaints continues to increase year over year.

‘Ideological weapon’

This week’s announcement applies only to the Justice Department, but other agencies, , plan to follow Bondi’s lead. Signaling its intentions, the Education Department has already an agreement, reached during the Biden administration, requiring the Rapid City schools in South Dakota to address discipline disparities.

An Office for Civil Rights found that Native American students in the district were twice as likely as white students to face discipline referrals during the 2021-22 school year and almost five times more likely to be suspended. The district was expected to hire staff to focus on equity in discipline, revise its policies and create a committee that included a member of the Native American community.

Rick Hess, the director of education policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, called the administration’s new policy a “necessary corrective.”

“The Obama and Biden administrations turned disparate impact into an ideological weapon,” he said.

In 2014, the Obama administration that said schools in which Black and Hispanic students were disproportionately suspended or expelled could be in violation of Title VI — even when those students misbehaved at higher rates. The document warned that even if a policy was “administered in an evenhanded manner,” it could have a “disparate impact.”

Michael Petrilli, president of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute, that the guidance, and less-punitive “restorative” approaches to addressing misbehavior, kept districts from removing disruptive and violent students and robbed other minority students of the chance to learn.

During the first Trump administration, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos rescinded the document, calling it an example of federal overreach. Under Secretary Miguel Cardona, the department indicated that it would reissue guidance related to discipline disparities, but officials held off. Experts speculated that it would be a politically risky move and that the pandemic had exacerbated behavior issues.

But the absence of explicit guidance didn’t hinder the Biden administration from investigating districts for disproportionality. Last September, Kentucky’s Jefferson County district entered into with the Department of Justice to address racial disparities in discipline. An investigation showed that Black students were disciplined at higher rates and faced harsher consequences than white students for the same offenses.

Joshua Dunn, executive director of the Institute of American Civics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, said that according to Bondi’s interpretation, the Obama-era discipline guidance did not comply with the law.

“Students who suffer the most from disparate impact disciplinary policies are minority students who have their education sabotaged by a few troublemakers who are kept in the classroom,” he said. Those are the students, he said, who will be “the most significant beneficiaries of this change.”

Bondi wrote that the administration tried to find a compromise by requiring schools, for example, to “remedy unintentional discrimination.”

“But any version of imposing liability for unintentional discrimination is inconsistent with Title VI’s original public meaning,” Bondi wrote. “Regardless, even a modified version of disparate-impact liability would not eliminate the department’s serious legal and policy concerns.”

Department of Justice – ��������

Splitting Up Special Ed and Civil Rights Will Dilute Services, Experts Say

‘Sharper teeth’

‘Change does need to happen’

Justice Dept. Probes 3 Michigan Districts Over LGBTQ-Related Curriculum

‘Capacity issue’

Justice Dept. Action Leaves Feds Without Key Tool to Prove Bias in Schools

‘Ideological weapon’

Department of Justice – ��