With Trump back in office, what’s next for the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights?

Since the U.S. Department of Education opened its doors in 1980, it has had the authority to enforce federal civil rights law in U.S. public schools and any colleges or universities that receive federal funding. These federal laws were passed with the goal of eliminating state-sponsored discrimination against Black, Indigenous, and other non-white Americans, women, and disabled Americans, among other protected groups.

But what happens when an administration wants to wield the department’s authority to enforce anti-discrimination law toward discriminatory aims? While President Trump’s proposal to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education captured the public’s attention, other radical ideas—including those that aim to remake federal civil rights enforcement into a tool to promote a radical, right-wing agenda—flew largely under the radar.

Less than a month into Trump’s second term, we have some clear indications of how the administration plans to leverage the department’s Office for Civil Rights to advance its agenda. The department announced plans to close civil rights investigations related to book banning, opened several new Title IX investigations over gender-inclusive school policies, while the White House released an executive order threatening to withhold funding for schools that promote so-called “discriminatory equity ideology.”

What realistically might we expect from OCR under Trump over the next four years? In this post, I provide a brief history and overview of OCR, along with the legal and illegal avenues the Trump administration may use to reshape OCR in service of their agenda.

What does OCR do?

The U.S. Department of Education (ED)’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) enforces several federal civil rights laws in programs that receive federal funding (including all K-12 public schools and the vast majority of colleges and universities). In all, OCR is responsible for protecting students from discrimination based on race, color, or national origin (Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964), sex (Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972), age (Age Discrimination Act of 1975), and disability status (Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990).

OCR primarily enforces federal civil rights laws by investigating claims of civil rights violations. These come mostly from civil rights complaints submitted to the agency by parents, families, and legal advocates. (OCR also opens a small number of proactive investigations, called compliance reviews, each year.)  Institutions found in violation of civil rights law can lose federal funding or have the case referred to the U.S. Department of Justice for further legal action. OCR receives thousands of civil complaints annually. In FY2024 alone, OCR logged over 22,000 complaints—more than double the number of complaints the agency received just a decade earlier. And notably, despite OCR’s exploding caseload in recent years, its annual budget has remained flat (Figure 1 below). The consequence of OCR’s inadequate funding is an understaffed agency that often takes years to resolve routine investigations.

Civil rights investigations are fact-finding endeavors that can entail a range of activities including reviewing educational records and policy documents and interviewing key stakeholders. These investigations can vary significantly in scope and scale, ranging from narrow investigations responding only to the specific alleged incident to broader ones that aim to understand whether individual complaints are emblematic of broader civil rights abuses. In recent years, both the Obama and Biden administrations prioritized systemic investigations, which contrasted with the narrower approach favored under prior Republican administrations. When potential civil rights violations are identified, OCR typically negotiates voluntary resolution agreements with educational institutions that outline a range of reforms the district or college agrees to implement to address OCR’s concerns.

While research on OCR’s contemporary enforcement work is limited, prior work suggests that the majority of K-12 complaints do not lead to any district reforms or enforcement actions. Enforcement penalties (in the form of rescinded funding) are vanishingly rare.

This raises the question of whether OCR’s enforcement work is effective in remedying discrimination. To date, no research (to my knowledge) has examined whether OCR’s contemporary enforcement efforts lead to changes in policy and practice that help schools create non-discriminatory school environments. Research does indicate, however, that the introduction of these civil rights laws—and OCR’s enforcement of them—reshaped public education in the U.S. for the better. OCR’s enforcement of Title VI’s prohibitions on racial discrimination led significant shares of southern districts to desegregate without federal court intervention. Research also suggests that the introduction of Title IX (overseen by OCR) increased women’s educational attainment, labor market participation, and enrollment in graduate education programs.

In addition to conducting civil rights investigations, OCR also releases non-binding guidance on emerging civil rights issues and administers the biannual Civil Rights Data Collection, which collects valuable information related to ongoing civil rights concerns in PK-12 public schools.

What should we expect from OCR under Trump?

The executive branch has a degree of well-established authority to revise policies and practices that guide OCR’s enforcement work. This could include, for example, revising the Case Processing Manual (which guides OCR’s investigatory work), revising the rules and regulations that define what OCR considers illegal discrimination (e.g., redefining sex-based discrimination under Title IX), and issuing non-binding guidance on civil rights issues of the day.

Although there is considerable uncertainty about what might lie ahead. Some of that uncertainty predates the 2024 election, with the Supreme Court’s decision in the summer of 2024 to end “Chevron deference,” which gave administrative agencies the authority to interpret laws passed by Congress. Further uncertainty is rooted in upcoming personnel decisions, including who will be appointed as the next assistant secretary for civil rights. Then, there are Trump’s campaign promises, the 2024 GOP platform, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, and a rush of early activity from the Trump administration—all of which suggest the administration will attempt to wield OCR’s authority in unprecedented ways.

According to reporting (and Project 2025), the administration plans to leverage OCR’s enforcement tools to punish schools for teaching so-called “critical race theory,” “woke ideology,” or “transgender insanity,” and otherwise promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion through school curriculum or programming. This was signaled in an executive order entitled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” which invokes the administration’s authority to enforce Title VI (racial/ethnic discrimination) and Title IX (sex discrimination) as the basis for directing the secretaries of Education, Defense, and Health and Human Services to devise a strategy to eliminate federal funding for “illegal and discriminatory treatment and indoctrination in K-12 schools, including based on gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology.”

In fact, we already have evidence of the administration’s intention to weaponize OCR. Since Trump took office in January, the acting secretary for civil rights has closed investigations related to book banning and announced proactive Title IX investigations into Denver Public Schools over an all-gender bathroom opened in one of their high schools, as well as two universities and one statewide athletic association over the inclusion of trans athletes in their women sports programs.

The administration also recently released a dear colleague letter confirming their intent to enforce the 2020 Title IX regulations after a judge vacated the Biden-era Title IX rule in early January. They key differences being that the Trump-era Title IX regulations place a heavy emphasis on due process for those accused of sexual assault (which advocates argue are hostile to sexual assault survivors) and do not mention gender nor sexual identity (while the Biden rules attempted to formally extend Title IX protections to gay and transgender students). However, legal experts expect the January decision will also be challenged.

What’s radical about this approach is how it upends the original intent of federal civil rights laws which aimed to rectify state-sanctioned discrimination against Black, Indigenous, and other non-white Americans (in the case of Title VI) and women (in the case of Title IX) and prevent further discrimination against historically marginalized groups. By redefining efforts to reduce racial inequalities as anti-white discrimination and efforts to make schools more equitable and inclusive for students of color, transgender students, and disabled students as “discriminatory equity ideology,” this administration is positioned to unwind decades of progress toward making education in the U.S. accessible for all.

How much will Trump’s OCR be able to do?

Despite Trump’s bromides about “sending education back to the states,” his administration appears poised to leverage OCR’s authority to enforce anti-discrimination law in unprecedented ways toward discriminatory aims.

Though, how much his administration will be able to accomplish is unknown and depends on a variety of factors. On some issues, like whether OCR can punish schools for what they teach or force schools to adopt a more “patriotic” curriculum, federal law is clear. Per the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act, the federal government is strictly prohibited from withholding federal funding for state’s curriculum decisions (including those related to textbooks and other instructional materials). OCR has interpreted this prohibition as foreclosing the possibility of influencing or reforming curriculum through civil rights enforcement. On other issues, like whether OCR can define LGBTQ+ inclusive school policies and practices as sex-based discrimination under Title IX, federal law is notably silent. Another layer of complexity here is the significant changes underway throughout the federal bureaucracy and Trump’s stated intentions to shut down the department—all of which will undermine the capacity and competence of OCR to carry out Trump’s agenda.

Ultimately, how successful the administration will be in repurposing OCR’s enforcement authority will depend on the federal courts, as many, if not all, of these questions will be challenged and adjudicated in federal court.

In the meantime, as hate speech and explicit forms of discrimination become more prevalent (as they did during Trump’s last administration), state and local leaders should be doubling down on their efforts to create safe and inclusive school environments for all students—including students of color, immigrant and undocumented students, disabled students, and gay and transgender students. Because, as it seems, the federal government won’t be in the business of protecting these students’ civil rights for at least the next four years.