Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) statement on the illegal removal of special education and civil rights enforcement from the U.S. Department of Education
Today, the U.S. Department of Education announced that it will move the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to the Department of Justice (DOJ). The administration calls these moves “partnerships.” They are not partnerships. This shift is part of a strategic effort to dismantle the Department of Education piece by piece—without Congress, without authority, and without regard for the disabled students who will pay the price.
DREDF condemns this action in the strongest possible terms.
This is illegal. Congress wrote the Office of Special Education Programs into the Department of Education by statute. Congress created OCR to enforce civil rights law in the nation’s schools. The administration cannot move these offices, hollow out their functions, or hand their work to agencies that were never built to run public education simply by issuing a press release. Reorganizing the federal government is Congress’s job, and Congress has not authorized this. Calling an unlawful transfer a “partnership” does not make it lawful.
This is a betrayal of fifty years of hard-won rights. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) exists because disabled children were once shut out of public schools entirely—turned away at the door, warehoused in institutions, or denied any education at all. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act exist because disabled people organized, occupied federal buildings, and refused to accept exclusion as the natural order of things. These laws were not given. They were fought for and won. Stripping the federal infrastructure that enforces them does not erase the rights, but it guts the systems that make those rights real.
This treats disability as a medical problem instead of a civil rights matter. Moving IDEA oversight into the Department of Health and Human Services tells disabled students that they belong to the health system, not the school system, and that disability is a diagnosis to be managed rather than a natural part of human life. It is the medical model dressed up as reform. Disabled students are students first. They belong in the same schools, same classrooms, and same hallways as everyone else. The federal agency that oversees their education should understand that, and HHS does not.
This abandons the students who most need educational justice. OCR enforces disability rights and protects students from discrimination based on race, sex, and national origin, too. Disabled students of color, disabled girls, disabled LGBTQ+ students, and disabled English learners live at the intersection of those protections every day. Scattering enforcement across the Justice Department—an agency with no education-specific expertise, already stretched thin, and already retreating from civil rights enforcement—sends the clearest possible message about whose rights this administration considers expendable. Disability justice and educational justice begin with the people the system fails the most. They are the students this decision endangers.
“This is not a partnership. It is an illegal dismantling,” said Michelle Uzeta, Executive Director of DREDF. “Disabled students should not have to piece together their rights from different corners of the federal government. When enforcement is dispersed, families are left chasing answers between agencies while students lose valuable time, support, and opportunities. The law promises equal access to education, and that promise requires coordinated and accountable enforcement.”
The administration claims these moves will strengthen enforcement and improve coordination. The opposite is true. Splitting special education from civil rights enforcement and pulling both out of the agency that oversees schools guarantees more confusion, longer delays, weaker accountability, and more disabled students left without the services, accommodations, and protections the law promises. Families who already wait months or years for schools to follow the law will now be told to figure out which federal agency holds which piece of it. It’s not right. The law promises equal access to education, not a bureaucratic scavenger hunt for accountability.
We call on Congress to assert its authority immediately and stop this unlawful transfer. We call on states, school districts, and our movement partners to hold the line on IDEA, Section 504, and the ADA regardless of which agency claims to administer them. And we tell disabled students and their families directly: your rights have not changed, DREDF is still here, and we will keep fighting until those rights are honored—wherever this administration tries to hide the responsibility.
Go to a plain language version of this page and our call to action →
