Students with discrimination complaints left in limbo months after California civil rights office closed

This article first appeared in EdSource K D was just starting to believe that the racial harassment her daughter had experienced at school for the last three years would in the end be addressed Students had called her daughter the N-word referred to her as a black monkey in an Instagram post made jokes about the Ku Klux Klan and played whipping sounds on their phones during a history lesson about slavery according to a announcement by her mother identified in court records as K D My daughter released all of these incidents to teachers and was never narrated whether they were addressed if at all K D stated in her declaration K D did what plenty of parents do when they believe a school district has violated their child s right to an training free of discrimination She filed a complaint with the U S Department of Development s Office for Civil Rights in May In December the office proposed a voluntary agreement to the school board of the district The board requested more information We were so close explained K D whose daughter is identified as M W in court records The board was like Hey we just need this one last piece While K D was waiting to hear back the U S Department of Coaching reported in March that it was cutting its workforce in half It planned to shutter and lay off staff at seven of its regional branches for its Office for Civil Rights One of those branches shuttered was in San Francisco which handled all the cases for the state of California including K D s The U S Supreme Court on Monday sided with the Trump administration allowing it to lay off employees of the Department of Mentoring effectively putting the Office of Civil Rights in a state of limbo When the mass terminations were first revealed it didn t sink in for K D what this meant The attorney on her daughter s development communicated K D that the office was still waiting to hear from the school district s board which was not identified in the court records If the episode wasn t resolved the attorney promised to flag it when it was transferred to the Seattle office along with all the other California cases but that would mean a much longer timeline K D recalled Essentially I would have to wait like six months to a year to even hear that someone s picked up my scenario Four months later K D still hasn t heard from anyone at the Office for Civil Rights She described EdSource that she s been left with a lot of questions but little hope We were already drowning Caseloads at the Office for Civil Rights reached a record high of during the Biden administration according to a analysis That was an increase from the previous year We were already drowning declared a San Francisco Office staffer a member of the AFGE Local affected by the reduction in force Catherine Lhamon former assistant secretary for civil rights at the U S Department of Learning under the Biden administration commented her department was consistently pleading with Congress for more staff to handle the increasing caseloads There is no universe in which we would have needed fewer people stated Lhamon who now serves as executive director of the UC Berkeley School of Law s Edley Center on Law Democracy K D joined a national suit filed on behalf of other parents and students who have cases pending with the Office for Civil Rights claiming that gutting the workforce and closing regional offices means that caseloads are two to three times higher for remaining staff effectively halting investigations It was unsuccessful in securing an injunction to stop the mass terminations In court documents the Department of Coaching disclosed that between March and June OCR received complaints dismissed opened for review and resolved with voluntary agreements Lhamon mentioned that represents a fraction of the work under the Biden administration What we see right now are performative occurrence openings and very little episode closings Lhamon mentioned The U S First Circuit Court of Appeals halted the mass firings scheduled to take effect in June through a preliminary injunction The suit joined by California Attorney General Rob Bonta claimed the terminations were not supported by any actual reasoning about how to eliminate waste but were part and parcel of President Trump s and Secretary McMahon s opposition to the Department of Training s entire existence In her thriving appeal to the U S Supreme Court U S Secretary of Learning Linda McMahon denied that the terminations were related to a desire to shutter the Department of Instruction Her appeal claimed the preliminary injunction represents judicial micromanagement of its day-to-day operations But McMahon also commented in an interview that the firings were the first step on the road to a total shutdown of the department A presidential administration eliminating an agency established by Congress poses a grave threat to the U S Constitution s separation of powers according to a dissent by U S Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law and then executes on that promise it is the Judiciary s duty to check that lawlessness not expedite it Sotomayor wrote Cases in limbo M W s situation was one of in California pending before the Office for Civil Rights when the San Francisco branch was shuttered according to a site that has not been updated since President Donald Trump took office Advocates say the office provides a venue to address a discrimination complaint especially for those who haven t had success appealing to their district or state and cannot afford to hire a personal attorney No one s going to OCR if they have any other option revealed Johnathan Smith an attorney with the National Center for Youth Law the Oakland-based nonprofit that represented K D in her suit The reason why K D turned to OCR was because she didn t have options And so for this administration to literally pull out the rug from under families from children who are at their lowest point of need is beyond cruel The Department of Learning updated its list of latest voluntary resolutions which include seven cases in California during Trump s second term There were also two letters addressed to State Superintendent of General Instruction Tony Thurmond and the California Interscholastic Federation involving transgender athletes eligibility to participate in school sports The other resolutions involve agreements regarding disability cases including those at San Diego State University as well as the Belmont-Redwood Shores Cupertino Union Inglewood Unified and Tehachapi Unified school districts Letters about the resolutions were signed by attorneys with phone numbers that contain Washington D C or Seattle-based area codes It s unclear whether majority of of the nearly cases in California pending before the Office for Civil Rights when Trump took office have been addressed The department did not respond to requests for comment Bulk deal with disability the right to a free and appropriate populace tuition harassment or discipline function use strict window addEventListener message function a if void a evidence datawrapper-height var e document querySelectorAll iframe for var t in a material datawrapper-height for var r i r e i i if r contentWindow a source var d a details datawrapper-height t px r style height d The office also handles discrimination states filed by students and parents or staff on the basis of gender race age nationality or language Over three-quarters of the pending cases in California deal with the TK- system the rest are postsecondary The office investigates discrimination asserts at the state level No state is immune for the need for a federal backstop against that harm Lhamon reported We have had six-decade bipartisan recognition that it is true Speaking her truth does matter M W will be a junior when she returns to school in the fall Her mother K D informed EdSource that her daughter continues to be bullied by students and the issue remains unaddressed by the school district The driving force for me has been just like her knowing that what she has to say and her speaking her truth does matter K D reported I want her to know no matter how long this has taken or will take that it does matter Schools are where students learn about academic subjects but also how society functions Schools are where we teach people how to participate in democracy Lhamon noted She worries that if the federal system for addressing discrimination breaks down students will receive the message that discrimination is allowed If you are harmed and no one speaks up for you what you take home is that it was OK Lhamon reported That s the worst part of the lesson EdSource is California s largest independent newsroom focused on Instruction