The Department of Justice will play a greater role in enforcing student rights under a new partnership with the Department of Education announced Tuesday.
The exact details of the agreement have not been made public, but Department of Education officials emphasized that many of the office’s tasks will now be completed in cooperation with the DOJ to “establish an efficient and effective protocol,” a department official said in a call with media on Tuesday. The Office for Civil Rights investigation will continue and ED staff will make final decisions, but the DOJ’s investigation and findings will inform that work, the official said.
“This partnership will not affect students, parents or families who believe they have been discriminated against,” said the department’s fact sheet.
The Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services will also move to the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Justice will assume certain responsibilities related to student privacy and training and counseling services. I Washington Post first reported the changes.
The Trump administration has been working for months to dismantle the Department of Education by offloading dozens of programs and responsibilities to other federal agencies through 10 cooperative agreements, and the administration added four more to the list on Tuesday. Ultimately, the president wants to shut down the ED, but only Congress can do that.
A senior department official said Tuesday that the DOJ partnership builds on existing agreements and coordination between the two agencies and “will be a deeper partnership to ensure equality.” [educational] reaching out to students and staff across the country.”
OCR and Special Education were the largest remaining offices in the Department of Education. Advocates for students with disabilities and civil rights groups have warned for months that moving any office to another state agency would put students at risk.
“The illegal transfer of these critical service offices is appalling,” said Shivali Patel, senior director of academic justice at the National Women’s Law Center, in a news release about the interagency agreement. “With this move, the Trump administration will be dismantling the Department of Education’s infrastructure that protects student rights and equal access to education, eroding the protections of millions of students. It is a clear attack on public education, and it will confuse students and faculty again a year from now.” [reductions in force]reconstruction and closure of offices in the Department of Education.”
OCR lost half of its staff during a dramatic layoff in March 2025. Since then, the beleaguered office has struggled to resolve cases as attorneys work through a barrage of unresolved complaints from students and families across the country. A report released earlier this spring found that OCR resolved only 112 cases in 2025—the fewest in more than a decade.
Many human rights organizations have since sued the department, saying that due to the lack of staff, the OCR cannot fulfill its official duties. And although there is no court decision requiring the Department to revoke the RIF, it chose to reinstate the workers it had fired earlier, although not all of them accepted the invitation to return. Since then, the department has turned to private contractors to hire more lawyers.
“The secretary was clear that as we return education to the states, we are always committed to strengthening efficiency” when it comes to strengthening human rights, said a senior official. “The signing of this IAA is the first step of OCR’s partnership with it [the] DOJ.”
