Education Dept Restores Civil Rights Staff After Layoffs

OCR Staff Restored

The United State Division of Education stated it prepares to bring back more than 260 Office for Civil liberty team that it cut as part of its March decrease effective, returning teams of employees to the civil rights enforcement arm in waves every two weeks Sept. 8 through Nov. 3.

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Court Upholds OCR Order

Last week, Judge Myong Joun said he stood by his optical character recognition order regardless of the Supreme Court’s decision in New york city v. McMahon because the trainees who brought the Victim Civil liberty Law Center case have “distinct injuries that they have endured because of the closure of the optical character recognition.”

An U.S. Department of Education and learning employee leaves the firm’s head office with their belongings on March 20, 2025, in Washington, D.C. Court documents show the division prepares to restore more than 260 laid-off Workplace for Civil liberty staffers via November 2025.
Win McNamee through Getty Images

Student Discrimination Case

In April, the Target Legal right Regulation Facility instance was brought by 2 students that “dealt with extreme discrimination and harassment in college and were relying on the optical character recognition to fix their issues to make sure that they might participate in public institution,” said Joun in his Aug. 13 decision.

The update, submitted in U.S. Area Court for the Area of Massachusetts, comes as a united state Supreme Court emergency order in a separate yet similar instance allowed the agency to move on with mass layoffs throughout the entire department, rather than just optical character recognition.

Concerns Over OCR Cuts

Civil liberties and public education supporters, along with lawmakers and education policy specialists advised that such a substantial lower to optical character recognition would endanger pupils’ civil rights and jeopardize their equivalent access to education and learning that OCR is implied to protect.