{"id":199163,"date":"2026-03-09T08:04:31","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T12:04:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tetrabulletin.com\/?p=199163"},"modified":"2026-03-09T08:04:31","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T12:04:31","slug":"education-department-withholding-records-on-discrimination-cases-propublica-lawsuit-alleges-propublica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tetrabulletin.com\/?p=199163","title":{"rendered":"Education Department Withholding Records on Discrimination Cases, ProPublica Lawsuit Alleges \u2014 ProPublica"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> [ad_1]<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-propublica-iframe bb--size-small-right\">\n<p>\n\t\t<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/iframe.propublica.net\/iframe\/f658d483-a14b-48e7-9d07-28bec882db28?width=752&amp;height=250\" id=\"iframe-f658d483-a14b-48e7-9d07-28bec882db28\" width=\"752\" height=\"250\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" class=\"iframe-embed\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>ProPublica has sued the U.S. Department of Education in federal court in New York, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/27688445-propublica-vs-us-department-of-education\/\">accusing it of withholding public records<\/a> about how it\u2019s enforcing civil rights protections for millions of American students.<\/p>\n<p>The Education Department has failed to provide public records related to its investigations, communications and other work that ProPublica sought through four Freedom of Information Act requests filed last year.<\/p>\n<p>The Education Department\u2019s civil rights arm for decades has investigated allegations of discrimination in schools. It historically has kept an online list of its open investigations and posted the findings of completed inquiries. But under Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, the Office for Civil Rights has been decimated and the work of its remaining investigators is largely cloaked in secrecy.<\/p>\n<p>ProPublica submitted three FOIA requests \u2014 the first of them more than a year ago \u2014 seeking records about civil rights investigations that have been opened or closed, notices sent to institutions being investigated and previous findings of discrimination that have been reversed under the Trump administration. A fourth request sought communication between top Education Department officials and conservative groups that have criticized public schools. Some of the groups have urged the OCR to investigate specific school districts and have met often with McMahon.<\/p>\n<p>The department has not responded to the requests other than to acknowledge that it received them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cActions by the Department of Education have real consequences for millions of students and families,\u201d said Alexandra Perloff-Giles of the law firm Davis Wright Tremaine, which is representing ProPublica.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe public deserves to understand how executive authority is being exercised so that it can hold government accountable,\u201d she said. \u201cCongress enacted FOIA to offer the public that necessary transparency, and we\u2019re asking the court to enforce it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Spokespeople for the department did not respond to a request for comment about the lawsuit. The department has not yet responded to the complaint in court.<\/p>\n<p>The lawsuit, filed Wednesday, argues that since Trump took office, the work of the OCR \u2014 once one of the federal government\u2019s largest enforcers of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 \u2014 has become significantly more opaque. Though each presidential administration has its priorities, OCR has consistently worked to uphold constitutional rights against discrimination based on disability, race and gender.<\/p>\n<p>But the focus of the OCR under Trump has shifted to investigations relating to curbing antisemitism, ending participation of transgender athletes in women\u2019s sports and combating alleged discrimination against white students. Complaints about transgender students playing sports and using girls\u2019 bathrooms at school have been fast-tracked while cases of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/trump-education-department-civil-rights-racial-harassment\">racial harassment of Black students<\/a> last year were ignored.<\/p>\n<p>And although some documents that detail how cases were resolved are being posted online, some older resolution agreements have been <a href=\"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/education-department-civil-rights-donald-trump-discrimination\">terminated<\/a>. Those terminations have not been disclosed to the public.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe public interest in this information is substantial and ongoing. Since there are approximately 49.6 million students in the U.S., changes to the ED and its policies affect millions of families,\u201d the lawsuit says.<\/p>\n<p>Trump has been working to shutter the department. Hundreds of department workers have been laid off and official employee counts at the OCR went from 568 in 2024 to 403 as of December 2025. McMahon closed seven of the 12 regional OCR offices that handled discrimination complaints across the country. Amid the staffing difficulties and the shift in priorities at the OCR, families\u2019 discrimination complaints have piled up.<\/p>\n<p>When President Joe Biden left office, about 12,000 investigations were open; by December 2025, there were nearly 24,000. ProPublica reporting has found that new complaints as well as older ones included in the backlog often are dismissed without investigation. OCR workers have said they feel as if they\u2019re working in a \u201cdismissal factory.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the past year, ProPublica has filed several other lawsuits seeking to force transparency in courts and the federal government. That includes a lawsuit filed in May against the State Department. ProPublica also has joined other media organizations in lawsuits.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-propublica-callout\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-group story-card is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-group story-card__description is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"story-card__dek wp-block-propublica-dek\">\n\tHave you recently filed a civil rights complaint or do you have a pending case? We need your help to get a full picture of how the dismantling of the Office for Civil Rights is affecting students, parents, school employees and their communities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>[ad_2]<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/education-department-civil-rights-office-foia-lawsuit\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[ad_1] ProPublica has sued the U.S. Department of Education in federal court in New York, accusing it of withholding public records about how it\u2019s enforcing civil rights protections for millions of American students. The Education Department has failed to provide&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":199164,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-199163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tetrabulletin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tetrabulletin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tetrabulletin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tetrabulletin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tetrabulletin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=199163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tetrabulletin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tetrabulletin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/199164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tetrabulletin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=199163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tetrabulletin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=199163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tetrabulletin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=199163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}