Families of kids with disabilities warn Education Department changes
could break a flawed system
[June 18, 2026]
By HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH, ANNIE MA and MORIAH BALINGIT
For months, and sometimes longer, parents of kids with disabilities say
they have waited for the Education Department to make progress on their
complaints of bullying or other discrimination.
Now that the department is offloading civil rights enforcement and
special education, some parents and advocates warn a process that has
largely been stalled since President Donald Trump took office will see
only more chaos and roadblocks.
“It’s to the point I don’t even check in anymore with the attorney,”
said Nicole May, an Ohio mother. May filed a complaint in spring 2024
with the department’s Office for Civil Rights, alleging her teenage
daughter was bullied over her hearing aids and was getting in trouble in
class because she couldn’t hear her teachers. More than two years later,
the case lacks a resolution.
Under the changes announced Tuesday, the Department of Justice will take
over civil rights enforcement in schools, and the Department of Health
and Human Services will oversee special education. The moves help
fulfill Trump’s campaign promise to dismantle the Education Department.
Linda McMahon, the education secretary, pitched the changes as a way to
get more help to families of kids with disabilities.
Advocates said special education doesn’t belong in a health department,
which usually treats disabilities as conditions to manage, instead of
differences in how children learn. The top Republican on the Senate
education committee agreed, saying he’d pursue legislation to keep
special education out of Health and Human Services.
Some families already are taking discrimination cases elsewhere
For many, though, the response to the announcement was a sigh of
resignation.
The Education Department’s civil rights office had long been the last
resort for parents who believe their child is facing discrimination at
school, with a mandate to review all complaints. Under Trump, the
backlog of cases has ballooned, and resolutions have dwindled.
Increasingly, attorneys say they are turning elsewhere to try to obtain
justice for children.
The reaction is a marked change from a year ago, when parents and
attorneys were in a panic as Education Department staff and attorneys
were slashed.
The Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services has shrunk
by roughly a third since 2024, and the Office for Civil Rights is
roughly 40% smaller. Meanwhile, in the Department of Justice, the
Education Opportunities Section has shrunk by half, according to
estimates provided by Justice Connection, a network of department
alumni.
“I think a lot of people are mad, but they are like, ‘What are we going
to do?’” said Emily Harvey, the co-legal director at Disability Justice,
formerly Disability Law Colorado, who has watched her cases languish.
When Trump took office, she had a federal complaint pending, alleging
some Colorado schools were illegally rejecting enrollment from kids
outside their neighborhood boundaries because they had disabilities.
Harvey also has a case pending at the Department of Justice, alleging a
district south of Denver restrained and secluded disabled students
hundreds of times, even though the practice is supposed to be reserved
for emergencies.
“I feel like they’re probably collecting dust on a virtual shelf
somewhere,” Harvey said.
In response to the federal backlog, she helped to push for a new state
law that expands the types of civil rights cases Colorado education
officials can pursue.
States across the U.S. already investigate various special education
complaints, including when parents allege schools aren’t following a
child’s individualized education program. But the Colorado legislation,
signed into law in May, allows the state to pursue the types of cases
typically handled at the federal level, such as those involving
allegations of discrimination and harassment.
Harvey said she didn’t think the federal civil rights office was ever
perfect. “But I think it’s become even less help for people who are
trying to resolve issues,” said Harvey, who worked as an Education
Department civil rights attorney in 2020 and 2021.
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The U.S. Department of Education building is seen in Washington,
Nov. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
Boston-area special education advocate Craig Haller said he’s heard
nothing on a complaint he filed early last year with the Education
Department’s Office for Civil Rights. Ever since the Trump
administration started dismantling the department, he has leaned
more on Massachusetts’s state system for resolving special education
matters.
He recently used that system to help a student whose high school
didn’t take into account his special education plan when it
suspended him.
“I got it fixed for my client,” Haller said. But without the federal
Office for Civil Rights, “I can’t get it fixed systematically.”
Department workers say the dismantling has made their jobs harder
While only Congress can close the Education Department, McMahon, a
billionaire and former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, has
signed 10 additional agreements to give department functions to
other federal agencies.
So far, those agreements have not reduced the number of employees
working on specific programs. But the union that represents
department workers says staff have run into issues with equipment
and access at their new postings.
“It’s hard to describe how inefficient the implementation of the
(agreements) has been,” said Rachel Gittleman, the union’s
president.
Taken together, the fracturing of programs, enforcement and
oversight for disabled students across multiple agencies raised
questions of what would fall through the cracks, special education
advocates said.
Robyn Linscott, who directs education and family policy at The Arc
of the United States, a major disability rights group, recalled
attending a three-hour listening session the Education Department
hosted in January. Families, educators and advocates described
barriers to accessing proper support and services. Although they
acknowledged breaks in the system, not a single parent advocated for
moving oversight of special education to Health and Human Services.
Still, she isn’t surprised the Trump administration moved the
program anyway.
“It has only been 24 hours, but I think we anticipated this move for
over a year,” she said on Wednesday.
In Congress, senators from both sides of the aisle said they would
try to stop the move to put special education in Health and Human
Services.
Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana said he would “publicly
commit” to working with his Democratic colleague, Sen. Tim Kaine of
Virginia, on legislative action that would push the administration
to change course. Cassidy, who lost a primary election this spring
and has less than six months left in his Senate term, has personal
knowledge of the education challenges faced by kids with
disabilities: His wife co-founded a network of charter schools for
students with dyslexia.
If special education is moved, he said Wednesday, it should go to
the Labor Department. That agency, he said, is better positioned to
support people with disabilities as they learn and work.
Ultimately, what matters to parents is whether they can get the
services their children need, said Rob Harris, an IEP advocate in
Colorado. Families spend an inordinate amount of time navigating
systems that should be working together to serve children, but often
aren’t. Harris has navigated those systems himself: His 19-year-old
daughter is blind.
“Families don’t experience the government through organizational
charts,” Harris said. “We experience it through the services our
children receive.”
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Associated Press writers Bianca Vázquez Toness and Alanna Durkin
Richer contributed to this report.
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