WASHINGTON — The U.S. Education Department is handing off two of its most significant responsibilities, transferring oversight of special education programs and civil rights enforcement to other federal agencies. The moves bring President Donald Trump considerably closer to his goal of effectively shutting down the department, even though formally dissolving it would require an act of Congress.
The administration announced Tuesday that the Justice Department will take on civil rights enforcement in schools, including student privacy protections, while the Department of Health and Human Services will assume responsibility for special education. Officials are describing the transfers as an interagency partnership designed to cut down on bureaucracy.
The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights has long served as a critical safety net for families who believe their child is being discriminated against at school. When local officials fail to address complaints, parents, students, and advocacy groups can file allegations of civil rights violations involving schools, colleges, and universities that receive federal funding. The office has the authority to compel schools to fix problems, and institutions that refuse could lose federal money.
The office handles a broad range of complaints — from unequal treatment of male and female athletes, to mishandled sexual assault allegations, to racially unequal discipline practices. Under the Trump administration, the office has also been used to enforce the administration’s stance on diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as its push to remove transgender athletes from sports.
On the special education side, the Education Department has played a pivotal role in distributing billions of dollars to schools and ensuring states follow the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which guarantees educational access for students with disabilities. The department’s special education office, which once had around 200 employees, now has about 121 staff members.
Trump made dismantling the Education Department a central campaign promise. Shortly after Education Secretary Linda McMahon was confirmed last March, the administration cut the department’s workforce by roughly half. Since then, the department has been steadily transferring its programs to other agencies through a series of interagency agreements.
Programs already moved include Title I funding for low-income schools, teacher training grants, English instruction funding, and the college-access program known as TRIO — all of which are now under the Labor Department. The federal student loan portfolio is being transferred in phases to the Treasury Department. Health and Human Services has already taken on grant programs tied to school safety, community engagement, and foreign medical school accreditation. Foreign language programs and a portal tracking foreign university donations have gone to the State Department, and the Interior Department now oversees Native American education.
What remains at the Education Department is largely a shell of its former self. Research arms such as the Institute of Education Sciences and the National Center for Education Statistics — which administers the Nation’s Report Card — are still there, though significantly reduced. The Office of the Education Secretary remains operational, and the department continues to process state waiver requests and maintain legal oversight of major grants.
The Trump administration’s fact sheet states: “This partnership will not impact students, parents or families who believe they have experienced discrimination. Anyone who believes discrimination has occurred in an education program or activity may file a complaint with ED-OCR” — referring to the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights.
Despite those assurances, disability and civil rights advocates are worried. Under the current system, a family whose child with a disability is denied school accommodations can often go to a single federal agency for help. With responsibilities now spread across multiple agencies, parents may face a more confusing and complicated process to get answers.
There are also concerns about how special education will be treated under Health and Human Services, which tends to approach disability through a medical framework rather than an educational one.
Robyn Linscott, who directs education policy at The Arc of the United States, a prominent disability rights organization, warned of the consequences of that shift. “Disability is treated as a diagnosis to manage instead of a natural part of human life,” she said. “When that mindset drives education decisions, students are more likely to be segregated, underestimated or treated as separate from the school community.”
Legal challenges are also possible, with advocacy groups potentially filing or amending lawsuits to block the changes. It also remains unclear what will happen to staff currently working in the Office for Civil Rights and special education, or how existing cases will be handled going forward.
The Office for Civil Rights was already dealing with a significant backlog of cases before Trump took office, a problem that has grown during his presidency. A report released in April by Sen. Bernie Sanders, who caucuses with Democrats, found that the office had reached zero resolution agreements since March 2025 involving sexual harassment, sexual violence, seclusion and restraint, racial harassment, or discriminatory school discipline. The report also identified more than 2,700 pending cases in those categories.
