ED Shifts Some Civil Rights Enforcement to Justice Department

The Justice Department will take a greater role in enforcing civil rights for students under a new partnership with the Education Department announced Tuesday.

The specific details of the agreement were not yet public, but Education Department officials stressed that many of the office’s duties will now be completed in partnership with the DOJ to “establish a more effective and efficient protocol,” a senior department official said on a press call Tuesday. Office for Civil Rights investigations will continue and staff from ED will make the final decisions, but DOJ investigations and findings will inform that work, the official said.

“This partnership will not impact students, parents or families who believe they have experienced discrimination,” a department fact sheet states.

The Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services will also move to the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Justice Department will take on some responsibilities related to student privacy as well as training and advisory services. The Washington Post first reported the changes.

The Trump administration has been working for months to dismantle the Education Department by outsourcing dozens of programs and responsibilities to other federal agencies via 10 interagency agreements, and the administration added another four to the list Tuesday. Ultimately, the president wants to shut down ED, but only Congress can do that.

A senior department official said Tuesday that the DOJ partnership builds on two decades of existing agreements and coordination between the two agencies and will be “deepening partnerships to ensure equal [educational] access to students and employees across the nation.”

OCR and Special Education were the largest remaining offices still at the Education Department. Advocates for students with disabilities and civil rights organizations have warned for months that moving either office to another federal agency could put students at risk.

“The illegal transfer of these offices that offer critical services is alarming,” Shiwali Patel, senior director of education justice at National Women’s Law Center, said in a news release about the interagency agreement. “With this move, the Trump administration would be systematically dismantling the Department of Education’s infrastructure that protects students’ civil rights and equal access to education, eroding protections for millions of students. It is a blatant attack on public education, and will further confuse students and faculty after a year of [reductions in force], restructures, and enforcement office closures at the Department of Education.”

OCR lost half its staff during a dramatic reduction in force in March 2025. Since then, the beleaguered office has struggled to resolve cases as lawyers work through a backlog of unresolved complaints from students and families across the country. A report issued earlier this spring found that OCR only resolved 112 cases in 2025—the fewest in more than a decade.

Multiple civil rights advocacy groups have since sued the department, arguing that with limited staffing the OCR could not properly fulfill its statutory duties. And while no court ruling has required the department to rescind the RIF, it opted to reinstate the staff members it had previously laid off, though not all accepted the invitation to return. Since then, the department has also turned to private contractors to hire additional attorneys.

“The secretary has been clear that as we return education to the states we remain dedicated to bolstering efficacy” when it comes to civil rights enforcement, the senior official said. “The signing of this IAA is the first step in OCR’s partnership with [the] DOJ.”