\n<\/p>\n
The Education Department\u2019s Office for Civil Rights, which is supposed to protect students from discrimination based on race, ethnicity, sex, age and disability status, isn\u2019t what it once was. <\/p>\n
The Trump administration laid off nearly half the staff in March, shuttered seven of its 12 regional offices, shifted the hollowed-out agency\u2019s focus to new priorities (including keeping transgender women out of women\u2019s sports) and then reportedly terminated more employees amid the ongoing shutdown.<\/p>\n
Philadelphia was among the cities that lost its OCR regional office in the first round of layoffs. Lindsey Williams, a Pennsylvania state senator who serves as minority chair of the Senate Education Committee, said the region\u2019s cases now go to Atlanta, \u201cwhere they may or may not be heard.\u201d <\/p>\n
To fill this void, Williams, a Democrat, announced she will file legislation to establish an Office of Civil Rights within the Pennsylvania Department of Education. The bill has yet to be written, but Williams said <\/em>she wants to \u201ccreate new authorities for the Pennsylvania Department of Education to investigate and enforce federal civil rights violations.\u201d She noted, \u201cThere may be opportunity as well to strengthen our state laws in this regard.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re looking at all of it to see what we can do,\u201d she said, \u201cbecause we haven\u2019t been here before.\u201d <\/p>\n Students facing discrimination across the country now have far fewer staff in the federal Education Department OCR who can respond to their complaints. The agency had a large backlog of cases even before President Trump retook office, and then it dismissed thousands of complaints in the spring. Some advocates have expressed particular concern about OCR\u2019s current capacity to process complaints of disability discrimination.<\/p>\n And those left at OCR appear to be applying a conservative interpretation of civil rights law that doesn\u2019t recognize transgender students\u2019 gender identity. The Trump-era OCR has actively targeted institutions for allowing trans women in women\u2019s sports. It\u2019s also focused on ending programs and practices that specifically benefit minorities, to the exclusion of whites. <\/p>\n Civil rights advocates are calling for states to step up. <\/p>\n \u201cWe cannot stop what is happening at the federal level,\u201d Williams said. \u201cThere\u2019s plenty of lawsuits that are trying\u00a0\u2026 but, in the meantime, what do we as a state do?\u201d <\/p>\n One of those ongoing suits, filed by the Victim Rights Law Center and two parents in April, alleges that shrinking OCR harms students from protected classes. It argues that the federal OCR cuts left \u201ca hollowed-out organization incapable of performing its statutorily mandated functions,\u201d adding that \u201cwithout judicial intervention, the system will exist in name only.\u201d But that intervention may not work in students\u2019 favor\u2014judges have issued preliminary injunctions, but the Supreme Court has, so far, allowed the Education Department layoffs to continue.<\/p>\n Shelby Chestnut, executive director of the Transgender Law Center and a Pennsylvania resident, said, \u201cStates need to be picking up some of the slack.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cIf more states with Democratic leaders started to propose such offices or legislation or money, it would likely create a bigger conversation,\u201d Chestnut said. <\/p>\n He noted that during the Obama administration, the federal government sued North Carolina over its controversial law banning trans people from using bathrooms matching their gender identity. But that\u2019s not something the Trump administration would do. Chestnut said some states are now saying\u2014and more should be saying\u2014\u201cOK, you won\u2019t do your job, so we\u2019ll do your job for you.\u201d<\/p>\n Beth Gellman-Beer, who was director of the Philadelphia regional office of the federal OCR before the Trump administration laid her off, said she doesn\u2019t know of other states creating a new state-level agency like the one that\u2019s been proposed in Pennsylvania. Even there, Republicans control the state Senate, and the legislation isn\u2019t certain to pass. She said other state legislatures \u201cshould be really thinking about this and taking immediate steps to build out some kind of civil rights unit to help students in their state.\u201d<\/p>\n Some states already have their own agencies that protect civil rights in higher ed, Gellman-Beer said, including the existing Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission. But she said these entities \u201care traditionally severely understaffed and don\u2019t have the resources and relied heavily on OCR.\u201d <\/p>\n Chad Dion Lassiter, executive director of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, agreed with Gellman-Beer\u2019s assessment of commissions like his. Lassiter said he feels \u201csheer exuberance\u201d over the proposed legislation\u2014which he said would be even greater if the new Office of Civil Rights were created in his agency. <\/p>\n \u201cGive us 20 additional staff and we\u2019ll do the work,” Lassiter said. Ideally, 15 would be investigators in his agency\u2019s education division and five would be attorneys, he said. <\/p>\n \u201cEach state that has a human relations commission should have an educational component,\u201d he said. \u201cFund these commissions.\u201d <\/p>\n Gellman-Beer said the only true fix is to restore a federal OCR\u2014because even if some states do step up, students\u2019 rights will be contingent on where they live. <\/p>\n \u201cIt used to be, under the model prior to this administration, that the promise for equal educational opportunity was across the board,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n For a student going before a state-level OCR in a state that doesn\u2019t recognize their identity, the process could be as fruitless as seeking help from the Trump-era federal OCR. The Movement Advancement Project, which advocates for LGBTQ+ rights, says 27 states have laws banning trans students from participating in sports matching their gender identity. Such laws don\u2019t all affect postsecondary students, but they often do, the organization said. <\/p>\n Nicholas Hite, a senior attorney at Lambda Legal, which advocates for LGBTQ+ people in court, said the federal OCR was supposed to provide a single, consistent application of federal legal protections. Now, he said, \u201cthat just isn\u2019t happening\u2014they\u2019re just refusing to do it.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cIf we\u2019re relying on states to be the enforcement mechanism, we\u2019ve created this patchwork where each state is going to take their own approach,\u201d Hite said. <\/p>\n Universities in states with laws recognizing trans students\u2019 rights have to decide whether to comply with those laws or with the Trump administration\u2019s approach. The administration, using massive cuts to federal research funding, forced concessions from the University of Pennsylvania for allowing a trans woman to compete in women\u2019s sports. But Scott Lewis\u2014a co-founder of the Association of Title IX Administrators and managing partner of TNG Consulting, which advises higher ed institutions on civil rights issues\u2014said so far he\u2019s seen blue-state universities handling discrimination complaints like they did before Trump retook office. <\/p>\n Lassiter, of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, said, \u201cIt\u2019s important for people to know you still have protections under the state.\u201d But protections for trans students can be unclear. <\/p>\n His agency enforces state laws protecting students against discrimination based on gender identity, but wouldn\u2019t directly answer whether that means it would order a university to allow a trans woman to play on a woman\u2019s sports team. Lassiter said his agency avoids \u201ccultural wars.\u201d<\/p>\n Students facing discrimination of all sorts can still sue under federal civil rights law in lieu of seeking help from the federal OCR or any state version of that agency. But personal lawsuits can be expensive. <\/p>\n Williams, the Pennsylvania state senator, noted that lawsuits may also not wrap up by the time a student graduates. Gellman-Beer, the former federal OCR employee, said they also often lead to individual remedies for a victim, rather than \u201csystemic interventions to make sure that the problem doesn\u2019t occur again for other students.\u201d That was the kind of broad solution the federal OCR could achieve, she said. <\/p>\n Hite welcomed people whose rights are being infringed, or who are concerned about others\u2019 rights, to reach out to Lambda Legal. He noted the federal OCR did much of its work through negotiating with universities to fix issues, rather than pursuing litigation. If the federal OCR is no longer doing these negotiations, the burden is placed on students and parents to sue to uphold their own rights\u2014while an added cost of litigation is also placed on universities, he said. <\/p>\n Lewis said that if the Trump administration continues its trajectory, people who don\u2019t feel they\u2019re being served at the federal level will go to the state level. <\/p>\n \u201cIf the federal government won\u2019t do it,\u201d he said, \u201cthe states are going to be left to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Education Department\u2019s Office for Civil Rights, which is supposed to protect students from discrimination based on race, ethnicity, sex, age and disability status, isn\u2019t what it once was. The Trump administration laid off nearly half the staff in March, shuttered seven of its 12 regional offices, shifted the hollowed-out agency\u2019s focus to new priorities<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32960,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[2346,1957,10830,1008,702,1561,1207,81],"class_list":{"0":"post-32959","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-civil","9":"tag-eds","10":"tag-gutted","11":"tag-office","12":"tag-rights","13":"tag-states","14":"tag-step","15":"tag-trump"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Unequal Rights Across States <\/h2>\n