WASHINGTON – For parents of kids with disabilities, advocating for their child can be complicated, time-consuming — and expensive.
Changes at the Education Department are likely to make the process even more difficult, advocates for kids with disabilities say.
If a parent feels their child is not getting appropriate services or school adjustments for a disability, they have options within their district. They can lodge complaints with their state, contending that the child’s rights have been infringed without proper legal procedures, or they can even go to court at the state or federal level.
These procedures typically involve multiple meetings with hearing officers who may not have specialized knowledge in disability law. Legal expenses can run into tens of thousands of dollars for a single case. Legal aid and advocacy groups offering free help often face more demand than they can handle.
For families unable to afford legal representation, filing a complaint with the Education Department has been a longstanding recourse. The process begins with completing the online form of the Office for Civil Rights, detailing the alleged discriminatory incidents. Subsequently, the agency is expected to look into the complaint, which may involve interviewing school staff and reviewing district policies for potential broader violations.
“It’s known and has the weight of the federal government behind it,” said Dan Stewart, managing attorney for education and employment at the National Disability Rights Network. “The process, the complaint portal, as well as the processing manual are all in public, and it does not require or typically involve lawyers.”
That option seems increasingly out of reach, advocates say.
Under President Donald Trump, the Education Department’s staff has been cut approximately in half — including in the Office for Civil Rights, whose attorneys are charged with investigating complaints of discrimination against kids with disabilities. The staff has been directed to prioritize antisemitism cases. More than 20,000 pending cases — including those related to kids with disabilities, historically the largest share of the office’s work — largely sat idle for weeks after Trump took office. A freeze on processing the cases was lifted early this month, but advocates question whether the department can make progress on them with a smaller staff.
“The reduction in force is simply an evisceration of the Office for Civil Rights’ investigatory authority and responsibility,” Stewart said. “There’s no way that I can see that OCR can keep up with the backlog or with the incoming complaints.”
A federal lawsuit filed Friday challenges the layoffs at the Office for Civil Rights, saying they decimated the office’s ability to process and investigate complaints.
While the OCR process was not perfect, reducing the office’s investigative staff will only worsen the challenges families face when seeking support for their kids, said Nikki Carter, an advocate for kids with disabilities and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
“It makes them feel hopeless and helpless,” Carter said. “By reducing the number of employees to handle cases, by putting stipulations on certain cases, it only makes it feel intensified.”
Education Department officials insist the staff reductions will not affect civil rights investigations and the layoffs were “strategic decisions.”
In her state of Alabama, Carter said families face an uphill battle to finding legal representation.
“They don’t have the money for an attorney,” she said. “Or the representation they’re getting is not the representation they feel like will be best for their child.”
Even if families can afford the high costs, a limited number of attorneys have the expertise to take on disability discrimination cases. Programs that offer free representation often have limited capacity.
If the backlog of cases increases at the federal Office for Civil Rights, families may lose faith in how quickly the department will investigate their complaints, Stewart said. That may drive them to alternate pathways, such as filing state complaints.
But state and local agencies haven’t always had the capacity or understanding to handle education disability complaints, Stewart said, since those cases so often went to the U.S. Education Department.
“They might not have the infrastructure or the knowledge or the staffing to take on the influx of cases,” Stewart said.
In a separate federal lawsuit filed Thursday, Democratic attorneys general argued the staff reductions at the Education Department may embolden school districts to ignore complaints of discrimination or harassment.
“Students with current complaints will likely see no meaningful resolution, with cases backlogged due to the shortage of employees to resolve them,” the lawsuit said. “Students facing discrimination, sexual harassment or sexual assault will lose a critical avenue to report their case.”
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