Young Children Face Greater Risks at School from Office for Civil Rights Reduction

A Pennsylvania elementary school student with a disability endured six months of classmates punching him in the head, calling him slurs, and threatening his physical safety, according to a U.S. Department of Education (ED) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) investigation of the 2021-2022 school year. The school environment was hostile, according to OCR, and the district put the responsibility on the child to protect himself from harassment; for example, the child’s teacher told him to avoid harassment by “keeping his distance” and made him switch seats rather than moving the harassers. The child’s parent had emailed the principal several times over the course of the abuse, once writing, “Yesterday, [the child] felt he had a better day and you know what happened? He was only interrupted and told to shut up not as many times as he is on a normal day and a kid…only made fun of his disability and [called him a slur].”

School staff had also alerted the principal to the abuse, with one teacher writing in an email, “There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that [another student] targeted [the child] and sought to hurt and embarrass him.” OCR investigators found that, despite these communications, the principal did not follow the appropriate response protocol, failed to treat the case as disability-based harassment, and did not provide the child with their legally-required free appropriate public education. As a result of the investigation, the district agreed to conduct training and a school climate assessment, review bullying data, and provide support to the child and his family.

Investigations like these are not rare. OCR is a key mechanism for parents, educators, and other community members to file complaints when they believe schools have violated civil rights laws based on race, gender, disability, and other characteristics. Civil rights violations start early, with many OCR complaints filed about wrongdoings toward young children. The OCR is often a last resort for families who have tried to work directly with school districts to address their children’s needs. OCR concludes its investigations with resolution agreements that require school districts to comply with civil rights laws going forward. In fiscal year 2024, OCR received its highest-ever number of complaints (22,687), an 18 percent increase over the prior year.

Despite a record number of complaints, in March 2025 the Trump administration fired 40 percent of OCR’s staff and closed more than half of the OCR’s regional offices, subverting the office’s power to protect students. Parents and advocates have filed a class-action lawsuit against ED, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, and Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor, alleging that slashing OCR will make the office unable to adequately address public complaints of discrimination in schools, which violates the equal protection clause of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. While some defend the firings by saying existing staff can handle the workload, fired attorneys have sworn affidavits that doing so will be impossible.

OCR staff have specialized knowledge that is distinct from that of state legal staff. One fired attorney stated in their affidavit that even in states with strong anti-discrimination laws, impartial hearing officers often lack understanding of schools’ obligations under federal civil rights laws, which leads to “tremendous disparity” within states as to how federal civil rights regulations are interpreted and applied. OCR plays a vital role in ensuring that a child in one state has the same federal civil rights protections as a child in another, they stated. Advisers to the Trump administration have proposed moving civil rights oversight to the Department of Justice, which is also undergoing dramatic staff reductions and policy changes. Doing so would likely decrease investigations and enforcement because, unlike ED, the Department of Justice can choose which cases to investigate.

Fired attorneys warn of investigation roadblocks

A fired senior OCR attorney recently swore an affidavit that since the office closures and firings at OCR, “it is impossible for the remaining investigative staff to absorb the additional cases in a way that will continue to meaningfully enforce civil rights laws in the education systems of this country….This is a completely untenable caseload and will likely decrease the efficiency and quality of OCR investigations.” Fired staff have not been able to transfer sufficient case information or communicate with families involved in investigations. Because OCR will be unable to resolve cases promptly, the attorney says, “students will continue to suffer and fall behind.”

Another fired senior civil rights attorney who had worked in the OCR’s San Francisco office for over 20 years swore an affidavit that, in March, their laptop restarted without warning, they were no longer able to access necessary files, and about an hour and a half later they were fired. “Because I received no advanced notice, I was unable to perform the simple courtesy of informing any complainant [or] administrator at an educational entity.” They were never told who would take up the cases or when anyone would notify the parties involved of the office closure.

OCR was already overwhelmed with cases during President Biden's administration. In February 2024, 91 civil rights and disability organizations sent letters to Biden and to Congressional leaders urging them to double OCR’s funding. The groups noted that OCR had “received more than six times as many complaints in 2022 as the office received in 1981,” while in the same timeframe, its staff was cut by half.

Young children are among the nation’s most vulnerable students and are at the center of investigations covering a range of civil rights violations. To illustrate the importance of OCR, below are examples from three of the many types of complaints the office investigates to protect young learners.

Sexual abuse of young children

OCR has investigated several sexual harassment and abuse cases involving young children. In one case of alleged sexual abuse of a five-year-old boy in a small, rural Montana district, OCR determined that the principal’s response to the parent’s complaint to the district was “clearly unreasonable in light of known circumstances” and showed “an indifference to the seriousness and potential trauma of sexual assault.” Another in San Diego, California, found 253 cases of sexual harassment and assault, 40 percent of which took place at elementary schools; OCR concluded that “these failures led to serial perpetration of harassment with insufficient District response, leaving District students vulnerable” and violating civil rights protections.

OCR found that Tennessee’s Memphis-Shelby County school district did not take appropriate action to investigate teachers allegedly sexually assaulting students seven times over a three-year period, including multiple cases in elementary schools. There were also 53 cases of reported staff-to-student sexual harassment in the district within that time, which included inappropriate touching and inappropriate relationships. Among its many findings of civil rights violations in the district, OCR found that the district did not have sexual harrassment policies that complied with the law and did not even have a file on record for most of its sexual assault cases. Given the high number of sexual harrassment and sexual assault complaints in school districts across the U.S. each year, and given the evidence of inadequate response by several school districts to such complaints, it is essential that OCR be able to provide prompt and thorough investigations.

While school districts in some cases bring in police to investigate sexual harassment and abuse cases, OCR states in its guidance and in letters to districts that legal standards for civil rights investigations are different than those of criminal investigations and that, as an OCR regional director wrote to Memphis-Shelby County Schools, police investigations “do not relieve the school of its duty to respond promptly and in a manner that is not deliberately indifferent.”

Harmful discipline of young children

OCR’s Civil Rights Data Collection (CDRC) tracks discipline of young children and identifies disparities. CDRC data has shown that Black preschool students are disciplined at far higher rates than would be expected from their enrollment rates. In 2024, CDRC found that preschool children with disabilities served under IDEA accounted for 24 percent of preschool enrollment, but represented 34 percent of preschool children receiving one or more out-of-school suspensions and 62 percent of preschool children receiving expulsions. Black students with disabilities have particularly high rates of suspension. Despite these disparities, a recent executive order from the Trump administration instructs ED and other officials to weaken or eliminate federal mechanisms for monitoring and reporting disciplinary disparities based on race.

Many OCR cases examine harmful disciplinary practices that should be replaced by research-based prevention and intervention strategies that support young children and educators. OCR data revealed that over a two-year period in a North Dakota district, staff restrained students more than 700 times, with the majority of incidents involving children in kindergarten to third grade. While students with disabilities made up only 14 percent of the district’s population, they made up 70 percent of the students who were restrained. OCR’s investigation found that students who were repeatedly subjected to restraint were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder as a result, and the schools did not incorporate those diagnoses into students’ education plans. The district did not document restraint and seclusion incidents appropriately, nor did they adequately address students’ missed instructional time as a result of restraint and seclusion, or ways to minimize its use. As a result of the investigation, the school district agreed to conduct staff training and record and monitor seclusion and restraint use.

Inaccessible elementary schools

Investigations often look into young children shut out of inaccessible schools. In 2024, OCR found that a Colorado school district had shortened the school day of a first grader with a disability due to concerns about the child’s behavior during lunch without convening the Section 504 team, evaluating the student, or recording the appropriate information. Following that investigation, Colorado passed a law requiring the state’s department of education to clarify when shortened school days are permitted, notify parents of their rights, and collect and report relevant data. OCR had similar findings the year prior for a school district in Illinois that cut short students with disabilities’ school days with the belief that it would avoid disruptive behavioral outbursts.

OCR found that when the parents of a child with diabetes wanted to enroll the student in kindergarten in an Arizona school, the school violated the student’s rights by refusing to create a 504 plan for the child’s diabetes treatment until after a 45-day waiting period, leading parents to enroll the child in another school.

A playground at a California preschool program was not accessible to children with mobility limitations. The school promised to fix the issue after OCR got involved. OCR uncovered similar cases in Colorado, South Carolina, and Massachusetts of inaccessible elementary school campuses.

Next steps for young children and families

These are a handful of examples of the tens of thousands of complaints OCR receives every year. Young children suffering discrimination, harassment, and abuse cannot put their development on hold while the adults in power grind their protections to a halt. Policymakers, families, and advocates must push back against the decimation of the OCR and protect young children.