On June 18, 2025, a U.S. District Judge ordered the U.S Department of Education (USDE) to reinstate all laid-off Office for Civil Rights employees for now, saying the layoffs and shuttering of seven regional offices had rendered the remaining staff “incapable of addressing the vast majority of OCR complaints.”
The closed offices had employed 208 investigators, or 55% of the agency’s total investigative staff. Caseloads for the remaining investigators have doubled since the mass USDE layoffs in March, according to the court ruling.
The USDE notified the OCR employees currently on administrative leave about the temporary block on June 20th, but said in its email that it intends to appeal the order.
Plaintiffs in the case, Victim Rights Law Center v. U.S. Department of Education, have shown that no new investigations have been opened since President Donald Trump’s inauguration and the judge stated that “existing complaints have been paused almost entirely” in the June 18 order granting a preliminary injunction to temporarily restore OCR to its status quo.
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