This article was originally written by Alvin Buyinza for Word In Black.
After months of employment limbo — and with thousands of civil rights complaints piling up — the U.S. Department of Education is abruptly calling hundreds of sidelined staffers at the Office of Civil Rights back to work.
The employees are being asked to return to work on Dec. 15 and report in person to their respective regional offices, according to a copy of an email from the Education Department shared with Word In Black.
“We can confirm that the Department will temporarily bring back OCR staff from Administrative Leave, who will resume work starting December 15,” Julie Hartman, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Education, said in a statement. “The Department will continue to appeal the persistent and unceasing litigation disputes concerning the Reductions in Force, but in the meantime, it will utilize all employees currently being compensated by American taxpayers.”
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The Department did not specify how many employees who’d be returning to work.
What does the Office of Civil Rights do?
The OCR is responsible for investigating and solving cases of discrimination — racism, sexism, or denial of special education services, for example — in the nation’s public schools. But under the Trump administration, OCR has not only been weakened but has also been weaponized to attack diversity, equity, and inclusion. Amid all the political turmoil and staffing cuts, the office’s capacity has collapsed.
“Essentially, what you’re seeing is what was once the muscle is now the bully,” Jonathan E. Collins, an assistant professor of political science and education at Columbia University’s Teachers College, says.
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Black parents who have filed civil rights complaints or who are contemplating doing so on behalf of their child may not be able to rely on OCR as much anymore, according to Collins.
As of December, the Education Department has resolved 165 cases, the lowest number in a little over a decade, according to an OCR database. Returning OCR staff will have to chip away at roughly 25,000 pending complaints, including roughly 7,000 open investigations, an anonymous source told NPR.
Collins says it will be “virtually impossible” for every single one of those complaints to get a response.
“I think the best expectation is for inaction.”
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‘$40 million wasted’
The workers were fired as part of a reduction-in-force in March. Although a federal judge in Massachusetts temporarily blocked the move in mid-June, an appeals court overturned the decision, allowing the Department to move forward with layoffs as it continues to battle an ongoing lawsuit.
In a statement, Rachel Gittleman, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, the union that represents the department workers, said she was relieved that the laid-off employees could return to work.
But she also criticized the Trump administration for placing the workers on administrative leave in the first place. She said the move “wasted $40 million” in taxpayer dollars.
“By blocking OCR staff from doing their jobs, Department leadership allowed a massive backlog of civil rights complaints to grow, and now expects these same employees to clean up a crisis entirely of the Department’s own making,” she says. “Students, families, and schools have paid the price for this chaos.”