The U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights has effectively ceased resolving a vast majority of its discrimination cases under the Trump administration. This administrative standstill has left thousands of students without federal recourse or protection against harassment in their schools.
The Frozen Resolution at Chesaning Middle School
The human cost of this administrative halt is evident at Chesaning Middle School in central Michigan. A fifth-grade Black student reported enduring a barrage of racial slurs, including being called a "monkey" and a "slave," with some peers mocking her skin color. Despite the severity of the harassment, the federal response has stalled.
According to an investigative document obtained by the Washington Post, the Office for Civil Rights launched an investigation into Chesaning Union Schools in June 2024.. By January 2025, federal officials had entered negotiations for an improvement plan to settle the case. However, these negotiations were indefinitely frozen, leaving the student without federally mandated protections while the harassment reportedly continues.
Three Settlements in 18 Months vs. the 2024 Surge
The decline in enforcement is reflected in a stark statistical collapse. According to the Education Department's online database, the Office for Civil Rights has completed only three resolution agreements involving racial harassment in the last 18 months. During that same period, no agreements were finalized regarding sexual harassment or violence.
This represents a precipitous drop from the previous year's activity . In 2024, the same office completed 47 resolution agreements related to sexual violence and 25 related to racial harassment. This shift suggests that the mechanism for holding school districts accountable—through mandated training, better accountability systems, and student compensation—has been largely deactivated.
Prioritizing Transgender Athlete Probes Over Racial Slurs
The freeze on traditional civil rights cases appears to be a result of a deliberate shift in agency priorities. Eight current and former employees, speaking on the condition of anonymity , claim that the Trump administration has gutted the Office for Civil Rights to prioritize investigations into transgender athletes and other conservative-leaning objectives.
While cases involving the use of the n-word, threats against Middle Eastern students, and allegations of inappropriate touching by principals remain pending, the administration has pivoted its resources. This reallocation of focus means that more than three dozen investigations that were in the final stages of negotiation have been left in limbo, according to school district officials and sources familiar with the matter.
Kimberly Richey’s 19,000-Case Backlog Defense
The administration denies that there is a purposeful effort to ignore discrimination claims. Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey stated that the office inherited a backlog of approximately 19,000 cases from the Biden administration, arguing that the previous president failed students.
However, this defense leaves several critical questions unanswered. It remains unclear why cases that were already in the final negotiation phase—such as the one at Chesaning Middle School—were frozen rather than closed. Furthermore, the administration has not provided a clear timeline for when the inherited backlog will be addressed or how it justifies the near-total cessation of sexual harassment settlements.
A Departure from the 1964 Civil Rights Act Mandate
The current state of the Office for Civil Rights marks a significant break from the agency's historical mission. Originally established to enforce the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the office was instrumental in dismantling segregation in Southern schools and later expanded to protect students based on disability and sex.
By halting these investigations, the Education Department is stepping away from a decades-long federal practice of ensuring equal access to education. As Michael Pillera, a ten-year veteran of the Office for Civil Rights, noted, the department is essentially signaling that it will no longer fulfill its core role of ensuring students can attend school free from discrimination.
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