The U.S. Department of Education has announced or confirmed at least 100 investigations into school districts, colleges and universities, and other entities as it emerges as a prime enforcer of President Donald Trump’s social agenda, according to an Education Week analysis.
Through these probes, the department is using its investigative power and threats to withhold funding to crack down on transgender athletes’ participation in girls’ sports; diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; and antisemitism.
The repeated threats to cancel federal funding as a way to carry out presidential directives mark a major departure from how the Education Department has traditionally enforced the nation’s civil rights laws in schools, according to experts.
It’s also creating a voluminous workload that’s piling up at precisely the time the Trump administration has cut nearly half the department’s staff. In the process, experts say, the number of politically aligned investigations could impede the investigation of thousands of other, more conventional cases of discrimination.
Since Trump’s inauguration, Education Week has tracked the start of at least 100 department investigations into school districts, colleges and universities, state education departments, and athletic associations, with the vast majority focused on DEI programming and transgender student policies. In a departure from previous administrations—including the first Trump administration—the Education Department under Trump has publicly announced the start of many of these probes, with the most recent one—into a Virginia district—announced May 22.
“The Department of Education is simultaneously the most dangerous in its exercise of power and the most useless in its availability for enforcing the civil rights complaints than it has ever been,” said Michael Pillera, a former investigator in the Education Department’s office for civil rights and now the director of the educational opportunities project for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a nonprofit that advocates for racial justice.
The Education Department said it has resolved hundreds of cases since Jan. 20, and that OCR personnel “continue to do their due diligence and evaluate all legitimate complaints that fall within the purview of its statutory responsibilities to vigorously protect all Americans’ civil rights.”
The department has specifically pointed to a backlog of antisemitism cases from President Joe Biden’s administration, and directed civil rights investigators to prioritize resolving those. In a post on X, a department spokesperson also said the office has opened more than 200 disability-related cases since Trump’s inauguration.
“The Trump Administration’s OCR is enforcing the law as written, not expanding the law to fit a political ideology,” an email from the agency said.
The Trump administration’s largest investigative focus is DEI
A large percentage of the investigations the Education Department has announced are considered “directed investigations,” in which the department initiates a case itself rather than in response to a complaint it has received.
Of the 100 publicly announced cases, the department’s focus has been primarily on weeding out DEI. It has launched 57 cases against colleges and universities, school districts, and a state education department for policies on DEI, arguing such programs are a violation of Title VI, a federal law that prohibits race-based discrimination in schools.
Colleges and universities are the subject of most of these DEI-related investigations. They also comprise a majority of all the department’s announced investigations.
The DEI investigations come as Trump has issued executive orders targeting such programs—even though his administration hasn’t precisely defined which it considers to be illegal—and the Education Department has issued its own related directives (all of which have been successfully challenged in court).
Even as that litigation continues, four school districts have drawn investigations from the department: over a Black student success plan in Chicago, a students of color summit in New York, racial affinity groups in Illinois, and a selective Virginia high school’s admissions policy that the Education Department says appears to be racially discriminatory.
Transgender student policies are another big focus
Transgender student policies have also drawn outsize scrutiny from the department, thanks to an executive order from Trump that threatened to withhold federal funds if schools didn’t bar transgender athletes from playing on girls’ and women’s teams.
Since January, the Education Department has launched at least 27 investigations into universities, school districts, education departments, and athletic associations over transgender student policies.
School districts are the subject of the highest number of these investigations, at 12. Maine has drawn a disproportionate amount of attention after its Democratic governor told Trump, “See you in court,” as the president singled out the state at a February White House event over allowing transgender girls to compete in girls’ sports. The state’s education department is the subject of two federal Education Department probes, and a school district in the state is also under investigation.
The first investigation Trump’s Education Department announced was a probe into the Denver district over a high school’s all-gender bathroom, which the agency suggested was a violation of Title IX, the federal law barring sex discrimination in schools that receive federal funds.
As it stepped up its investigations into transgender student policies, the Trump administration rolled out a joint task force with other agencies to handle such probes.
As smaller pieces of the pie, the department has announced 12 investigations into antisemitism allegations, three into universities’ foreign gifts and contracts, and one regarding alleged discrimination against students with disabilities. The department is also part of a joint task force with other agencies for antisemitism investigations, and OCR said in a March news release it was focusing on resolving a backlog of antisemitism complaints.
Schools and colleges aren’t only feeling pressure from the Education Department. When the Trump administration targeted Maine, for example, the U.S. departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services departments also launched probes, and the U.S. Department of Justice has sued the state over its transgender policies.
The Education Department itself has also opened multiple investigations, through different laws or internal offices, into at least 10 institutions, particularly in states with policies that go against Trump orders, including California, Maine, Minnesota, and Washington state. Those 10 institutions account for 22 separate probes.
What’s happening with OCR’s ‘bread and butter’ cases?
The announcements are “equally telling” about what the department isn’t investigating, said Jackie Wernz, a civil rights attorney who previously served in OCR. Those are cases about basic athletics equity, a failure to accommodate disabilities, and failure to respond to allegations of sexual misconduct.
“In my experience as an OCR investigator and as someone who has represented schools in OCR proceedings for two decades, the cases that are the bread and butter of OCR are not being addressed by this administration,” Wernz said.
Wernz said she hasn’t heard back after reaching out to the office for civil rights on behalf of institutions. Meanwhile, the National Center for Youth Law has started a public education defense fund to “fill the enforcement void” left by OCR reductions, the group said in a news release.
OCR cuts are also the subject of litigation against the Trump administration, with those suing claiming that the cuts have essentially rendered the civil rights office unable to fufill its legally required responsibilities. While one federal judge on May 21 rejected the request in one lawsuit to order that the Trump administration restore OCR staff and regional offices, another judge ruling in a broader lawsuit the following day ordered the Education Department to reinstate staff it’s terminated since Jan. 20.
Brad Rosenberg, an administration lawyer, took issue with the implication there was a “decimation of OCR” at a recent court hearing.
“Yes, it is true that seven offices were closed, but five offices remain. Yes, it is true that approximately half of the office’s employees have received [reduction in force] notices, but that also means that approximately half of the office’s employees remain,” Rosenberg told Judge Paul Friedman. “Those are still substantial numbers of field offices, and it’s not for plaintiffs or this court to second-guess how many field offices there need to be, or where they need to be, or precisely how many employees there there need to be.”
- 10 institutions are the subject of two or more investigations each
- Colleges and universities are the subject of 70 of the probes
- The greatest number of investigations are looking into race-based programming, or DEI
OCR’s neutral lens has shifted, experts say, along with its interpretation of the law
Legal experts have also raised concerns about how the Trump administration is interpreting landmark federal anti-discrimination laws. Most investigations launched by the department allege violations of Title VI and Title IX. Advocates have argued the laws are being used against the very populations they’re meant to protect.
“I think that the Trump administration interprets these laws very differently even than the previous Trump administration’s response,” Wernz said. “ … It’s really hard to say, ‘Here’s what the law says, and here’s what you’re expected to do,’ when you’re getting these extremely novel interpretations coming from the Trump administration.”
The launch of so many investigations has created a “campaign of chaos designed to chill activities that are lawful from school districts,” Pillera said.
“While it’s doing all of that, at the same time [there are] hundreds, thousands of complaints that no one can get through because there’s no one there,” he said.
In addition, the language the department uses in announcing investigations makes the outcome seem all but predetermined, Pillera said.
Some announcements have quoted the advocates who filed the complaints sparking the probes. That’s the case in an investigation of a New York policy barring districts from using Native American imagery for mascots. A department press release quoted the Native American Guardians Association, which submitted the complaint against the state’s education department.
Another news release announcing an investigation into DEI practices in an Illinois school district included comments from the executive director of the Southeastern Legal Foundation—the group that filed the complaint on a teacher’s behalf.
And the department itself has used seemingly determinative language as well.
Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said the department would not let federal funds flow for districts “to become safe spaces for racial segregation or any other unlawful discriminatory practices,” in the Illinois district’s case. Another program, in Chicago, was using funds in a “pernicious and unlawful manner,” he said.
“I think all of that also sends a message that OCR believes this is a violation already, before they’ve even started investigating it, and that they have a particular point of view,” Pillera said.
A skeleton crew, and thousands of complaints
The office for civil rights typically receives thousands of complaints; it resolved 16,005 complaints and received a record 22,687 in 2024, according to data released by the department.
More than half of of the received complaints alleged sex discrimination (52%), followed by disability discrimination (37%), and discrimination based on race and national origin (19%), according to the department. That year, the department added 57 new staff members to address the influx.
Today, the OCR staff has shrunk by nearly half from more than 560 to just around 300. Current and former staff members have said in sworn court statements that investigator caseloads have doubled.
“It’s hard to fathom how OCR could still be resolving all of those complaints about all those different issues, all those important issues coming from school communities, while it’s opening all of these separate complaints on targeted areas, and while it has shuttered seven of its 12 regional enforcement offices and fired half of its staff,” Pillera said.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon told The 74 in April that the multi-agency investigative efforts it’s launched “to some extent” makes up for cuts to OCR.
But it’s possible that the staff reductions could even be slowing down the investigations of the cases the department is publicizing, Wernz said.
In one high-profile case, the Education Department found Maine’s department of education in violation of Title IX over its transgender athlete policies and started the process of withholding federal school funds.
But in other cases, “I’m still waiting for some receipts to show that any investigatory work is actually happening at OCR, like a written determination letter that has actual findings of fact, or resolving disputes,” she said. “It just really feels like no one’s home.”
