Since Israel’s war with Hamas began last fall, Israel’s two leading civil rights groups have been at odds on many points. The Anti-Defamation League, which works to combat anti-Semitism, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy group, have painted starkly different pictures of the plight of Jewish and Palestinian students amid a surge in anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim incidents on college campuses.
But they agree on one thing: Both groups agree that the federal agency that investigates discrimination complaints from schools lacks the resources to deal with the mountain of cases being reported.
The Office for Civil Rights, a division of the Department of Education, recently released its annual report showing that complaints reached a record high last year: In fiscal year 2023, the office received 19,201 complaints, up 2% from the previous year’s record high of 18,804.
The agency, which Congress has kept its funding flat through fiscal year 2024, has seen a years-long exodus of employees and has been unable to recruit enough. The agency says the number of complaints it receives each year has tripled since 2009. During that time, the average number of full-time employees has fallen by about 70.
“The office was devastated,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said at an education reporters’ conference last week.
Some outsiders worry that the fallout from the campus response to the Middle East conflict has pushed the office to its breaking point.
As lawmakers in Washington negotiate the Department of Education’s next annual budget, it’s unclear whether recent outrage on Capitol Hill over rising anti-Semitism on college campuses will shift the frugal stance of many Republicans, some of whom have called for abolishing the federal Department of Education altogether.
Unlike lawmakers, civil rights groups agree that the office needs more funding.
“Is it a good idea to give this agency more funding? Absolutely,” said Edward Ahmed Mitchell, CAIR’s national vice president.
Lauren Wollman, government relations director for the Anti-Defamation League, expressed a similar sense of urgency about addressing the agency’s case backlog in a statement to USA Today.
“OCR cannot protect the rights, safety and well-being of students without sufficient resources to properly investigate and respond to the growing number of cases,” Wollman said.
How does the Civil Rights Office work?
Students and employees of elementary, middle, and high schools and universities that receive federal funding can file complaints about discrimination they believe to be in violation of the law with the Office of Civil Rights (OCR). Staffed by lawyers and other professionals, the office enforces six federal anti-discrimination laws, including Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
OCR officials decide whether those complaints merit further investigation. If there is enough evidence, the department launches an investigation. If the department finds violations, federal officials negotiate a resolution with school administrators.
For example, in May, the department settled a complaint from the Redlands Unified School District in Southern California after it concluded that school administrators had failed to respond promptly and effectively to reports of sexual assaults against students by staff or other students. As part of the settlement, the school said it would overhaul its compliance processes.
Schools that refuse to cooperate with civil rights investigations risk losing federal funding, and agency officials could report the problem to the Department of Justice.
A history of struggle
The tension between increasing workload and staff retention has been going on within offices for decades.
In 1981, OCR employed about 1,100 full-time staff and received fewer than 3,000 complaints. Last year, the office had just 556 full-time staff, nearly half the number of employees. Meanwhile, complaints have ballooned to more than six times the 1980s average.
“We desperately need more help to ensure we investigate the cases before us,” Cardona told lawmakers at a congressional budget hearing in early May.
The Biden administration is requesting an increase of about $22 million in OCR’s budget for fiscal year 2025. The increase would add 86 full-time employees, 90% of whom would work directly on investigating discrimination complaints.
The administration’s budget request explains that OCR processed 145 complaints of discrimination based on common ancestry in the first quarter of fiscal year 2024. That’s more complaints than the agency received in the previous three years combined.
Slight increase in outage complaints
The latest report also shows that complaints of disability-related discrimination also increased slightly over the past year, from 6,467 to 6,749.
The increased reliance on OCR to advocate for students and staff with diverse needs stems from states’ historical abdication of responsibility to hold school districts to compliance with the law, said Denise Marshall, a disability rights advocate and CEO of the Parent Lawyers and Advocates Council.
“The states are not doing their jobs,” she said.
As many school districts rework their budgets in the wake of the expiration of federal pandemic relief funds, they could face even more staffing shortages to support vulnerable students in the coming years.
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The Title IX drama continues
The Office for Civil Rights is the lead agency driving the Biden administration’s overhaul of Title IX, the law that bans discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs that receive federal funding.
Latest Title IX news: Biden finalizes rules to strengthen rights for sexual assault victims, LGBTQ students
One of Joe Biden’s campaign pledges when he ran for president in 2020 was to rewrite Trump-era Title IX guidelines that have been criticized for strengthening the rights of people accused of sexual misconduct. Biden’s long-promised rule changes weren’t finalized until April, allowing his administration to further delay codifying specific protections for transgender athletes.
A set of new rules formally expanding rights for LGBTQ students and employees is set to take effect on Aug. 1, just months before Biden faces reelection. Republican-leaning states are already challenging the changes in court.
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Brian Dittmeyer, public policy director for the LGBTQ education advocacy group GLSEN, said the rapid wave of Title IX lawsuits at the state level only underscores the importance of the federal government’s role in protecting queer and transgender students and employees.
“It’s not necessarily the community that’s not being supportive,” he said. “It’s the government and those in power that are not being supportive.”
Zachary Schermele covers education and breaking news for USA TODAY. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow @ZachSchermele on X.