Trump froze the Education Department's civil rights investigations and gutted the office that prevented them

The Education Department's Office for Civil Rights has frozen more than 30 active student civil rights investigations since Trump took office, according to the Washington Post. One involved a Black fifth grader in Michigan whose parents filed a complaint after she was called racial slurs at school. The case was nearly complete under Biden. It is now on hold.

The office has not stopped working — it has redirected. OCR is now focused on investigating trans athletes and claims of anti-white discrimination, the Post reported. Since January 2025, the office has reached three settlements.

Seven of the OCR's 12 regional offices, which provided on-site training and consultations to schools, were shuttered last year. The administration terminated grants for all four Equity Assistance Centers and requested zero dollars for the technical assistance program in its FY2026 budget. The administration argues states and localities can fund comparable services themselves.

Former OCR officials say the Justice Department, which would inherit enforcement, cannot replicate the regional model that let schools resolve problems before they became formal complaints.