Federal judge stands by order requiring OCR be restored

A federal judge is standing by his June decision requiring the U.S. Department of Education to restore its Office for Civil Rights “to the status-quo” so it can “carry out its statutory functions.” The order, which prevents the department from laying off OCR employees, comes despite a U.S. Supreme Court emergency order in a separate case allowing the agency to move forward with mass layoffs across the department.

The case challenging the gutting of OCR, which included the shuttering of seven out of 12 regional OCR offices, was brought by two students who “faced severe discrimination and harassment in school and were depending on the OCR to resolve their complaints so that they could attend public school,” said Judge Myong Joun in his Aug. 13 decision. 

Joun said Victim Rights Law Center v. U.S. Department of Education is separate from New York v. McMahon — the Supreme Court case that allowed the department to proceed with mass layoffs — because the students have “unique harms that they have suffered due to the closure of the OCR.”

The Education Department appealed Joun’s ruling Thursday to the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals, asking the court to allow the department to move forward with its OCR closures. 

The court battle prolongs the administrative leave of OCR employees that began in March, after the department laid off more than 1,300 staff across the entire Education Department. President Donald Trump and U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon pushed the layoffs as a way to “end bureaucratic bloat” and downsize the federal government, including its expenses. 

However, according to American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, the union representing a majority of the laid-off Education Department employees, the federal government has been paying around $7 million a month just for employees to sit idle on administrative leave. 

The employees’ administrative leave that began in March originally ended with their termination on June 9. However, court cases blocking the department’s gutting have prolonged their employment.

According to the numbers released by the agency last year, OCR received a record number of complaints against K-12 and higher education institutions in 2023, the most recent year for which numbers are available, surpassing a previous all-time high set in 2022.