#office-for-civil-rights

#office-for-civil-rights

President Donald Trump has struck a different tone, suggesting that some of these workers "don't deserve" back pay and seizing the opportunity to fire others, particularly those who staff and run what he has called "Democrat agencies." One of these agencies is the Department of Education, whose Office for Civil Rights enforces laws such as Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act-which bars discrimination based on race, color, and national origin-in federally funded schools and colleges.

In March, the department enacted a reduction-in-force plan to eliminate nearly half of its employees, including 276 at OCR, as part of wider effort to dismantle the 45-year-old agency. Those RIFs prompted multiple lawsuits against the department, including New York v. McMahon and the Victim Rights Law Center v. Department of Education; while the former challenged RIFs across the entire department, the latter case was restricted to the RIFs within OCR. Federal district judges issued injunctions in both cases during the litigation process.