The U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights reached resolution agreements with schools and colleges in only 1% of pending cases in 2025, the lowest percentage from any OCR in over the last decade, according to a recent report from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
The report also found that OCR didn't reach any resolution agreements for major discrimination cases involving sexual harassment or sexual violence, seclusion and restraint, racial harassment, or discrimination in school discipline — all areas that OCR reaches resolution agreements on in a typical year.
Resolution agreements between OCR and school districts are meant to ensure districts change their policies and practices to root out discrimination. They may stipulate that districts, for example, conduct climate surveys, increase staff hiring or provide training.
Although resolution agreements were down from prior years — the department resolved around 5% of cases in 2024, for example — the Education Department did refer a number of expedited cases to the U.S. Department of Justice related to restricting transgender students' access to bathrooms, facilities and athletic teams aligning with their gender identities. The department also cracked down on many states' or districts' diversity, equity and inclusion policies and practices, including those concerning academic success plans designed for Black students.
Overall, in 2025 — a year in which OCR was among offices gutted by mass layoffs at the U.S. Department of Education — only 112 resolution agreements were reached, according to the report.
Of those, none resolved antisemitism, Islamophobia and other forms of national origin discrimination through OCR's standard investigation and agreement process, despite the Trump administration's efforts to highlight its work against antisemitism, the report found.
This is also despite OCR receiving a similar budget in 2025 as in 2024, at around $140 million.
Sanders said in an April 28 statement that the numbers are proof the layoffs "have been a disaster for students and families across this country."
“When a child with a disability is denied the education they are entitled to, when a student faces racial or sexual harassment — they turn to the Office for Civil Rights for help," said Sanders. "Yet the Trump administration has decimated this office. As a result, tens of thousands of students facing discrimination have been left with no recourse. That is beyond unacceptable.”
Responding to the Sanders report, Amelia Joy, a spokesperson for the Department of Education, said in an email, “The Biden Administration spent their years in office pandering to an extreme ideology, illegally rewriting the law, and letting the safety and wellbeing of students fall to the wayside."
"When the Trump Administration returned to a staggering 5-digit OCR case backlog, we focused on restoring OCR to its original purpose — enforcing the law to ensure all students can receive an education free from discrimination,” Joy said. “The prior Administration failed our students, but we are utilizing every tool at our disposal to resolve the backlog and return common-sense to our schools.”
At an April 28 Senate subcommittee hearing on the administration's fiscal 2027 budget request, Education Secretary Linda McMahon advocated for cutting OCR's budget by 35%, while at the same time admitting that OCR's output had lagged in the last year.
However, she also said the department had to contend with a backlog of 19,000 OCR complaints at the beginning of 2025 and said the agency is rehiring many of the lawyers who the agency had laid off.
“There was a time when we were not processing cases as quickly as we should, but we are now focused on doing that and moving forward,” McMahon said. “We expect to see progress.”
The following numbers from Sanders' April 28 report highlight the status of OCR's work in 2025 as it underwent staffing turmoil and adjusted to the Trump administration's new priorities:
