The Education Department’s Secretive Shift on Student Rights

ProPublica has filed a federal lawsuit in New York, claiming that the U. S. Department of Education is keeping important records hidden from the public. The complaint says the department has ignored four Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests that asked for details about civil rights investigations in schools. The Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which has long handled discrimination cases, once published a list of active probes and shared the results of completed ones. Since Linda McMahon became Education Secretary, OCR’s staff has been cut and many investigations are now shrouded in secrecy. The FOIA requests sought information on open or closed investigations, letters sent to schools under review, and past findings that were overturned during the Trump era. A fourth request asked for emails between top department officials and conservative groups that criticize public schools, some of whom have pushed OCR to investigate specific districts. Only a brief acknowledgment that the requests were received has been issued; no substantive records have been provided. ProPublica argues that this lack of transparency harms millions of students and families, and urges the court to enforce FOIA.The lawsuit points out that under Trump OCR’s focus shifted toward issues like antisemitism, transgender athletes in women’s sports, and alleged discrimination against white students. Meanwhile, cases of racial harassment faced by Black students were reportedly ignored. Some older resolution agreements have been withdrawn without public disclosure. Staff reductions are a key factor. OCR employees dropped from 568 in 2024 to 403 by December 2025, and seven of the twelve regional offices were shut down. With fewer investigators, complaints have piled up: about 12, 000 investigations were open when Biden left office, but nearly 24, 000 remained by December 2025. Many of these are dismissed without proper inquiry, leading OCR workers to describe their work environment as a “dismissal factory. ” ProPublica has used similar legal tactics to push for openness in other federal agencies, including a May lawsuit against the State Department. The current case reflects a broader push to hold government bodies accountable for their actions regarding civil rights enforcement in education.