The OCR employees were fired in March as part of a broader reduction in force at the Education Department.
Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
The Education Department is calling Office for Civil Rights employees who were fired earlier this year back to work.
The Trump administration tried to ax half of the Education Department’s OCR staff in March, but it has been paying them not to work since then while it continues to fight litigation contesting its plan. The department says it hasn’t given up on defending that move, but now says it’s “important to refocus OCR’s work and utilize all OCR staff to prioritize OCR’s existing complaint caseload.”
“In order for OCR to pursue its mission with all available resources, all those individuals currently being compensated by the Department need to meet their employee performance expectations and contribute to the enforcement of existing civil rights complaints,” the department said in Friday emails obtained by Inside Higher Ed. “Utilizing all OCR employees, including those currently on administrative leave, will bolster and refocus efforts on enforcement activities in a way that serves and benefits parents, students, and families.”
One email gave an employee a Dec. 15 return date, while another said Dec. 29. It’s unclear how many workers will return. Bloomberg reported that the order went out to “more than 260,” while USA Today cited the department as saying “roughly 250,” but the Associated Press said “dozens.” Inside Higher Ed is awaiting clarification from the department.
Rachel Gittleman, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents department employees, said her union hasn’t been told how many workers in its bargaining unit received the email. She said in a statement Monday that “while we are relieved these public servants are finally being allowed to return to work, Education Secretary Linda McMahon has made clear that she would rather play politics than uphold her responsibility to protect students’ rights.”
“For more than nine months, hundreds of employees at the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) have been sidelined from the critical work of protecting our nation’s most vulnerable students and families,” Gittleman said. She said the administration’s actions keeping these employees out of work and on leave “wasted more than $40 million in taxpayer funds.”
“By blocking OCR staff from doing their jobs, Department leadership allowed a massive backlog of civil rights complaints to grow, and now expects these same employees to clean up a crisis entirely of the Department’s own making,” she added.
