WASHINGTON D.C. – Today, Senator Bernie Sanders, Ranking Member of the Senate HELP Committee, released a report that outlines the harmful impact of the Trump administration’s Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), an office that works to prevent and remedy discrimination and harassment in schools. The report found that after Trump took office in 2025, OCR reached the fewest resolutions agreements since 2012, and reached no resolution agreements for complaints about racial harassment, sexual harassment and assault, and discriminatory discipline. Discrimination against students with disabilities made up the largest share of OCR complaints, and yet OCR reached 78% fewer resolutions in those cases in 2025 compared to the prior year.

Shiwali Patel, senior director of education justice at the National Women’s Law Center, issued the following statement in response to the findings in the report:

“When the GAO issued a report in February about OCR, we learned that the Trump administration was systematically failing students and wasting federal resources after laying off nearly half of OCR staff and gutting seven out of 12 OCR regional offices. But the analysis that the HELP Committee made public today reveals the full and shocking scope of the failure, which cannot be underscored enough. The number that appeared again and again in the analysis was “zero,” highlighting exactly how much work the Trump administration is doing to protect our students. Girls, students of color, students with disabilities, student athletes, student survivors of sexual violence, and LGBTQI+ students have all been harmed by Secretary McMahon’s disastrous decisions, including OCR unlawfully imposing the Trump administration’s extremist political agenda.

“There were thousands of cases pending before the Office for Civil Rights in 2025, each representing a student who rightfully expected that the federal government would protect their civil rights. It is not only the mission of OCR, but of the Department itself as a civil rights agency, to do that important work. It is incomprehensible that only 1% of those cases reached a resolution agreement in 2025 by the Trump administration. This is a searing indictment of the administration that claims to care about women, girls, and families; we deserve a government that will protect our children’s education and our students’ future.”