Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Department of Education said it plans to bring back more than 260 Office for Civil Rights staff that it cut as part of its March reduction in force, returning groups of employees to the civil rights enforcement arm in waves every two weeks Sept. 8 through Nov. 3.
- The department's Aug. 19 update was filed as required by a federal judge's order in Victim Rights Law Center v. U.S. Department of Education directing that the Education Department be restored to "the status quo" so it can "carry out its statutory functions."
- Since March, the Education Department has been paying the OCR employees about $1 million per week to sit idle on administrative leave, according to the update.
Dive Insight:
The update, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, comes as a U.S. Supreme Court emergency order in a separate but similar case allowed the agency to move forward with mass layoffs across the entire department, rather than just OCR.
That case — New York v. McMahon— was overseen by the same judge who ordered on June 18 that OCR be restored to its former capacity.
Last week, Judge Myong Joun said he stood by his OCR order regardless of the Supreme Court's decision in New York v. McMahon because the students who brought the Victim Rights Law Center case have “unique harms that they have suffered due to the closure of the OCR.”
In March, the Education Department closed seven of its 12 regional offices as part of the layoffs that impacted 1,300 staffers across the entire department.
Civil rights and public education advocates, as well as lawmakers and education policy experts warned that such a significant slash to OCR would compromise students' civil rights and compromise their equal access to education that OCR is meant to protect.
In April, the Victim Rights Law Center case 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 Joun in his Aug. 13 decision.
The Education Department's update this week that it is returning OCR employees to work is in compliance with Joun's decision.
After Joun ordered the Education Department in the New York case to restore the department more broadly, the administration filed an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court to push the RIF through.
The department did not respond by press time to K-12 Dive's inquiry as to whether it intends to likewise appeal the Victim Rights Law Center decision to the Supreme Court.
