The federal office that investigates discrimination in American schools opened fewer than 370 racial discrimination investigations in its first 18 months under the current administration, while about 5,000 complaints alleging racial discrimination were filed. Roughly 11% of the racial cases it did open involved allegations of discrimination against white students.
The figures come from Education Department records that ProPublica obtained by suing the department, and which it reported first. They cover the Office for Civil Rights from Inauguration Day 2025 through July 2026, a stretch in which the office opened about 100 new investigations a month. In 2024 it averaged 310.
Sexual violence shows the same pattern. More than 200 new complaints produced 29 investigations and a single finding of fault against a school district. The office has historically opened at least 60 such investigations a year. Two investigations were opened into discrimination based on sexual orientation. On sex discrimination the office opened 172 investigations into claims of discrimination against males and 104 into claims involving females.
Of roughly 24,000 new complaints logged through May 2026, nearly 17,000 old and new cases were closed, almost always by dismissal. Fewer than 700 of the cases this administration opened ended in a finding of wrongdoing. None of that counts a backlog of more than 10,000 investigations opened before January 2025 that are still pending.
What happened to the office explains much of the arithmetic. Education Secretary Linda McMahon fired hundreds of staff early in the term and closed seven of the department’s twelve regional civil rights offices. The administration is now working to shut the department down and move the civil rights office to the Justice Department. The office also stopped publishing its list of open investigations, which is why a lawsuit was needed to see these numbers at all.
For Black families, the office is the place a complaint goes when a district suspends Black children at several times the rate of white children, when a school cuts the only advanced course in a Black neighborhood, or when a child is restrained. There is no private right of action for most of what the office handles under Title VI, so a complaint there is frequently the only route that does not require hiring a lawyer. Five regional offices now cover the country.
“They’re barely doing anything to protect women and girls, including survivors of sexual violence,” said Shiwali Patel, a former attorney in the office who is now at the National Women’s Law Center.
“They are not allocating their resources to racial discrimination complaints, to sexual assault complaints,” said Johnathan Smith, managing director of education at the National Center for Youth Law.
Rachel Gittleman, who leads the union local representing the office’s staff, said the attorneys who remain “are navigating pure chaos.”
The department rejects the reading. Spokesperson Sabin Sidney said the administration “treats any form of discrimination on the basis of race or sex as illegal,” blamed the previous administration for leaving 19,000 unresolved cases, and said of the criticism: “Spare us the crocodile tears as the Trump Administration is working to restore OCR to its original purpose.”
The plan to move the office under the Justice Department has not been completed, and would need Congress to dismantle the department that houses it.
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