Transcript: Disability Community Fights Back: Defending Students

Presented by: Karma Quick-Panwala (she/her), Director of Children and Family Advocacy, Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund, Catherine E. Lhamon (she/her), incoming Executive Director, Edley Center on Democracy & the Rule of Law; Previous: Assistant Secretary, OCR, Department of Education, Auden Perino (they/them), Senior Counsel for LGBTQI+ Equality, National WomenÕs Law Center, Santiago Orosco (he/they or Žl/elle), Director of Organizing, New Disabled South, Winston Berkman-Breen (he/him), Legal Director, Student Borrower Protection Center, Julea Seliavski (they/them), Co-President, National Disabled Law Students Association, Mary J. Goodwin-Oquendo (she/her), Founder and President, The Goodwin-Oquendo Law Firm; Adjunct Professor, Fordham Law School

June 5, 2025

KARMA QUICK?PANWALA:  Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our webinar on the disability community briefing, defending students with disabilities in the age of Trump. My name is Karma Quick?Panwala and I am the director of Children and Family Advocacy Services here at DREDF.  It is a pleasure to be with all of you here today. I would like to begin with a brief overview as well of the agenda for today and also give you an introduction of some of our speakers. And on this slide in front of us is a photo of Jennifer Keelan, a young girl being assisted in climbing up the Capitol steps during the Capitol Crawl in 1990, taken by photographer Tom Olin. Our presenters today, myself, with DREDF; Catherine Lhamon, the incoming executive director with the Edley Center on Law and Democracy, formerly the assistant secretary with the Civil Rights Department Education. Auden Perino, senior counsel for LGBTQI+ Equality National Women's Law Center. Santiago Orosco, director of organizing at New Disabled South. Winston Berkman?Breen, who is the legal director at the Student Borrower Protection Center.  And Julea Seliavski with the National Disabled Law Students Association. And we have Mary Goodwin?Oquendo of the Goodwin?Oquendo Law Firm with Fordham Law School. All of us today are looking forward to talking about our expertise in these areas of law being directly affected.  

Our topics today that we will cover:  What is the Department of Education and why it is so important? What has happened so far in the last five months, especially as it pertains to staff and cuts and funding.   We just lost our slides.  Hold on one moment, please.  What students particularly are being targeted?  Why student loans are a disability issue?  What might happen next?  A reminder that we still have rights.  And how we can make our voices heard. We will also reserve some time at the end for questions and answers.  

The Department of Education provides several core functions for students.  The enforcement of civil rights, the enforcement of laws that help students with disabilities, and research and data collection. Catherine, I believe you are going to speak more to this.  

CATHERINE LHAMON:  Yes.  

CLAUDIA CENTER:  Can we go back one slide?  Thanks.

CATHERINE LHAMON:  Thanks, all, I very much appreciate everyone coming together for this important conversation and I also very much appreciate DREDF for pulling this webinar together. So just to start with the Department of Education and what it does fundamentally. The United States Department of Education is a Civil Rights agency. Congress created it in 1979 to maximize equity for student learning. And Congress did create the Department of Education as its own stand?alone Cabinet agency, because Congress found that diffuse federal support among other existing Cabinet agencies had not worked to ensure equity for students and for learning in schools across the United States.

So, the charge from Congress to the United States Department of Education includes activities like providing research and data about conditions of schooling and what kinds of education delivery works for students in P12 schools as well as in institutions of higher education, and there's literally at the United States Department of Education something called a What Works Clearinghouse and that's a collection of materials that gives instructors and educational communities at their elbows on what works and these are research?based supported ways to deliver equitable information to give to students in all schools and in all of the United States.

There's also data collection that is specific to the Office of Civil Rights, which I led, and I will be happy to turn to that shortly. And also data collection and reporting about conditions of schooling year over year over year across the United States. And they include how many women are STEM majors in college and universities? How many students attend P-12 schools? And what are differences among learning opportunities for kids in all kinds of schools in the country? The Department of Education also makes grants to support student learning in both P-12 schools and colleges and universities. And I just want to be specific about the kinds of activities that those grants support, because they are broad and deep and they matter a lot. There are 26 million students, from low income backgrounds who are served under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and they receive federal supports, their schools receive federal supports to ensure that these students receive equal education opportunity.  

CLAUDIA CENTER:  Catherine, we're going to take a quick break to unfix our interpreter assignments.  

CATHERINE LHAMON:  Okay. Okay, I'm going to go back.  I'm hearing yes.  I'll go back to describing the kinds of grant funding that the United States Department of Education supports.  So there are 9.8 million students who are enrolled in rural schools. And they receive funding from the United States Department of Education to ensure their educational opportunity. There's one other category, there are lots more, but one other to highlight, there are 6.6 million Pell grant recipients for low income students in the United States and they are receiving funding from the United States Department of Education to ensure their ability to access the education of their dreams.

The Department of Education also administers federal student aid and I know that we will hear more about that later today, so I will just note that student loans and administration of student loans is a large component of the work of the United States Department of Education. And specific to the disability community, the Department of Education enforces the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and to put a number to that enforcement work, there are sevenÊ?? nearly 7.5 million students with disabilities who are served by the IDEA. And then the Department of Education has a Civil Rights enforcement arm, and that's the office that I led, that's the Office for Civil Rights, I led that office during the Obama and the Biden presidencies and it was the honor of my life.

The work for the Office of Civil Rights is created by Congress, when the Department of Education was created, and the office is charged to enforce non?discrimination based on disability, race, sex, in schools, in every school that is federally funded everyday for every student whose rights have been violated. So it is an enormous charge.

And the Office for Civil Rights fulfills, or until January 20th, had fulfilled that charge by actively investigating complaints that come into the office, investigating information that the office has that civil rights may have been violated in schools. Also sharing resources and guidance about what the law is as written by Congress and as described in the regulations that the office enforces. And as courts have interpreted it, to explain to school communities so that somebody's mom, a student, an educator, a school board member, a college president, would have information about what the law is and how the Office for Civil Rights enforces it.

The Office for Civil Rights is also charged by Congress to create a specific dataÊ?? to collect specific data, the civil rights data collection, and it's data indicators collected since 1968 forward for every student in every school that is funded by the United States Department of Education in P-12 schooling. And the kinds of data indicators include teachers who are certified in a particular school.  How many students attend a school?  Absenteeism rights, the numbers of students taking advanced placement or high?level courses within a school or in a particular school district. The number of students with disabilities have been disciplined in a school district and so many more indicators about a student's experience and the quantum of equity delivered in schools across the country.

And I want to take a moment to say there is a website for students with data collection and anyone can access the data that has been collected and published to date and also can look at that data based on their school, their state, their school district, and compare to other schools to take a look at how those equity indicators shake out in different school communities as well. So, I hope you all will take a look at that data and use it, as I have done as well. Just to say that until January 20th, when the presidency changed, the Office for Civil Rights had been humming along.  It was, it was, it has long been, overburdened with a higher complaint volume than staff could effectively manage. But it was doing, I think, exceptionally well with the staffing that it had.  And the challenges that were coming in. Just to give some concretes, in the Biden presidency, the Office for Civil Rights resolved 7,574 more cases than during the prior Trump presidency and fully 80% of the total number of cases resolved in all of the Obama presidencies' eight years. Which is to say that the Office of Civil Rights had been more efficient than it had ever been and working through the cases well and it also did that as against an enormous challenge of CR during the Biden presidency, and the second, the third, and the fourth highest case volume per year in history. Ending the last fiscal year with nearly 23,000 complaints coming in in that single year across all of the jurisdictional areas that the Office for Civil Rights enforces in. And only approximately 400 investigators to manage those cases.

So, there was a lot of work coming in.  A lot of work going out.  And still, cases needing more and more investigation and so the Office for Civil Rights would have benefitted, would still benefit, from more people to do that investigative work and give families and school communities answers about whether the law has been violated and if so, how to correct those violations. So that brings us to where are we now?  And what is happening now with the Department of Education? As we likely all know, President Trump campaigned with a plan to close the Department of Education.  And has issued an executive order directing the Department to work on implementing that campaign promise.

Separate and apart from that executive order and the President's promise, the Department of Education has laid off huge numbers of staff and curtailed activity that is within its congressional charge. And it's done that across many of the areas that I described earlier. So, the impacts of those staff cuts affect the administration of federal student aid, affect the enforcement of the IDEA, affect civil rights enforcement in schools, affect the ability to deliver and administer grant funding, etÊcetera. These are very, very, very dangerous changes to the operation of the Department of Education and to the ability of those of us who are not working there to be able to expect that the Department will fulfill its statutory job.This to say, I think we know, but to make it very clear, of course closing a statutorily?created Cabinet agency requires an act of Congress rather than just the act of the President and so far, there is litigation that has succeeded to date and has the Department of Education to bring back the laid?off employees and to continue its work as Congress has charged it to do.

The Trump Administration has appealed that order, so we will all see what follows, as the litigation continues. In the meantime, specifically focusing on the office role, the Office of Civil Rights and the harms for people with disabilities.  I want to talk about where we stand. The Office of Civil Rights in this Administration has lost seven of 12 regional offices.  And that means that there are fewer than half the enforcement staff who had been in the Office for Civil Rights on January 19th. Now in the offices, and news reports have been made public that caseloads for the remaining staff are as high as 380 cases per investigative staff member. That is not a workable caseload.  That cannot move through the required investigative task to investigate and resolve cases in an efficient way and to respond effectively to families with caseloads that are that high. There's also been recent reporting that has noted that the Office for Civil Rights resolved only 57, that's five seven, cases that require change in the month of March. And 51, five one, cases that require change in the month of April. The news reported, and I know this to be true, that during the Biden presidency, the Office for Civil Rights typically resolved 200 such cases in a given month.

So, the substantive resolutions, delivering change for communities, are roughly 1/4 of what they should be in this Administration, and that's also quite dangerous for civil rights in our schools and for our kids and students' rights that they're trying to learn. That's to say also in March of this year, the Office for Civil Rights dismissed only 91% of the cases that it resolved.  That means that only 9% of the cases that it resolved were cases that had a substantive resolution of any type. That other 91% of the cases coming out of the Office for Civil Rights was just a decision not to investigate. So, you know, that's quite damaging and it doesn't auger well for our ability to secure rights now from the Federal Government. I want to talk specifically about what that means for the disability community and for disability rights.

The Office for Civil Rights in this Administration has issued press release after press release after press release about case openings and about guidance published. But it really has not said all that much about disability at all. Last month, it issued its first press release related to disability.  And there, it noted that it had opened an investigation of whether White students with disabilities were discriminated against when a district allegedly favored providing services to students of color with disabilities. And that would, of course, be discriminatory and it's within the Office of Civil Rights' jurisdiction to investigate. It's noted, though, this set of allegations is the only time that the Office of Civil Rights has used its voice related to disability, in nearly five months of this Trump Administration. Historically, disability claims have been 50?60% of the work coming in to the Office for Civil Rights. Those complaints range from topics of whether students with disabilities have been discriminatorily restrained in schools or students with disabilities receive accommodations or things required under IEP or Section 504 plan. Or students with disabilities are segregated from their non?disabled peers. Or students with disabilities experience discriminatory discipline in school. Or students with disabilities who are English learners receive the services that they need in languages that they and their families don't understand. Or that students with disabilities are over or underidentified as students with disabilities. Or, for example, this is my last example, but these are the kinds of things that come in, but students with disabilities lack access to the full range of course work available to their non?disabled peers. I know claims of this type are still pending in the Office for Civil Rights, because we were working to resolve those cases before I left in January. So, it is gutting to me to see the Office For Civil Rights not announcing resolutions of the very many cases addressing the rights of students with disabilities to equal access to education. In this Administration, the Office for Civil Rights has repeatedly communicated its preference for civil rights protections for certain groups to the exclusion of others.

This preference, so far, notably has not included students with disabilities as a class. The Administration has spoken over and over again to its disdain for inclusion of transgender and non?binary students and students of color in particular. For example, issued an executive order threatening criminal prosecution of educators who even refer to students as non?binary. Whether or not the students' parents or student has informed the school of the correct identification for the students. And it is claimed to require certification from states and school districts that they will conform to an understanding of non?discrimination based on race and color, that no court has adopted. Of course, that expression of disdain negatively impacts the disability community whose members include students of color and transÊand non?binary students. And the Administration's relative silence regarding the rights of students with disabilities itself excludes and harms students with disabilities, given the high volume of discrimination still persisting based on disability itself.

There is one comparatively small upside to the silence, though. The Administration has not rescinded disability?specific guidance that families and advocates can still use.  This is one example.  We issued in July of 2022 guidance regarding the civil rights protections related to discipline of students with disabilities, and that is still on the Office for Civil Rights website. The key take?home in that guidance and in a law, the guidance describes is that students with disabilities cannot be disciplined for disability?based behavior.  Cannot. And the guidance describes the kinds of interventions and supports mandated under federal Civil Rights laws specifically Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act related to discipline of students with disabilities.

So I hope you all will use and share that guidance among many others that are still available, covering topics such as web accessibility, the rights of English learners with disability, and specific conditions ranging from asthma to epilepsy to diabetes to food allergies to depression or bipolar disorder, anxiety, and eating disorders. I hope you will find, use, and advocate for students with those disabilities and using that guidance to be able to support the disability community.

Let me make one last slide and then I will stop talking at you and look forward to the rest of the webinar. But there are lots of pending cases in the Office of Civil Rights now.  That is generally true and it is especially so now when this Administration is mostly bringing in cases coming in and a very small number of new complaints and not spending its staff resources on resolving the cases that have been pending. Our kids need our Federal Government to do more.  And their rights depend on it. So I'll stop there. Thank you.

CLAUDIA CENTER:  Thanks, Catherine.  We're going to hear from Mary now about how these changes are affecting people with disabilities in the real world.

MARY J. GOODWIN?OQUENDO:  Yes, thank you so much, Karma, and thank you, Catherine. A significant percentage of my practice involves helping students in post?secondary and professional settings.  So college students, graduate students, law school, medical school students, who need accommodations, who have experienced disability?based discrimination, retaliation, harassment, etÊcetera. And I'm a huge fan of alternate dispute resolution.  So, for many years, I have either encouraged clients to follow in their own or I've guided them through the process of filing complaints with OCR, and that's because I found, you know, prior to now [chuckles], that OCR was really, really effective at addressing these issues in a timely fashion, right.

Primarily through mediation that occursÊ?? that occurred before a case was opened or after a case was opened. I thought it was a good opportunity for people to come to the table and find practical solutions that would allow students with disabilities to resume their educations, move forward in their careers, and just be treated with the respect that they deserve. Now, I will say that presently, I have a number of clients, and I know of other people who are not clients, whose OCR cases have completely essentially disappeared. I had, for my clients, I had some cases that were in the process of being resolved through mediation, right, and because of the Office closures and then also because of the workload that Catherine described, I think she said it was 300 and something cases per investigator, there is literally nothing happening. Meanwhile, people are getting bad grades because they don't have their accommodation.  They're facing disciplinary actions, etÊcetera, because they're unable to do well. So it's a very, very difficult, very difficult situation.  And people are addressing thisÊ?? and I'll talk about this in greater detail when I speak toward the end of the programÊ?? people are addressing this by engaging attorneys, looking to state and local agencies to file complaints, etÊcetera. So I just wanted to give my two cents on that.

Because, you know, it's already expensive.  It's expensive to be poor.  It's expensive to have a disability, right. People are racking up these student loans and there are so many consequences resulting from that that my fellow panelists will be able to speak on. Thank you.

KARMA QUICK?PANWALA:  Thank you very much, Mary. I would like to pass this off to Auden Perino to speak on the Civil Rights of trans and non?binary students today.  

AUDEN PERINO:  Hello.  Thank you for having me.  My name is Auden, I'm an attorney at the National Women's Law Center and we have worked with the enforcement of Title IX and other laws and we have worked in the growing consensus in the courts and the civil rights community to understand that Title IX on prohibition on sex?based have affected queer, trans, and non?binary youth. And there is an ongoing fight to recognize that other trans and non?binary youth who have diagnoses of gender dysphoria are entitled to things in school under the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act. If you take away one thing from my portion of this presentation, it should be to understand that schools must not back down from their legal and professional obligations to support and protect all of their students, and that includes students who are trans, non?binary, and intersex.

Regardless of who is in the White House, all youth, including trans students, deserve to learn and grow up as their truest and best selves and that means included to be a part of school. If we can go to the next slide.

It's very important that we are holding space to discuss the overlapping education rights and needs of LGBTQI youth and disabled youth. There is a large Venn diagram for these communities and also the topics and the movements for disability justice, gender justice, and queer and trans liberation are intertwined. I am going to focus on the rights of trans students specifically, given the unprecedented attacks against their rights. And also the reality that 30% of trans and non?binary students self?identify as having a diagnosed disability. TheseÊ?? the overrepresentation is a product, first of the reality that transphobia is a disabling force.  And it's also important to understand our opponents are using a playbook to dehumanize and strip autonomy from trans and non?binary people as well as disabled people using some of the same tactics.

We are going to talk a little bit more about school sports in just a moment.  But I would like to define this term here, it says anti?trans school sports bans rely on sex testing.  Sex testing here means a range of unscientific and traumatizing practices that can range from collecting students' genetic information or medical records, all the way to invasive physical examinations of students' bodies. Looking at the history of sports in the U.S. and around the world, we know that body policing and gender policing in sports causes the most harm to Black and Brown women and girls. And we will also discuss a White House promulgated order that is trying to enforce a narrow and unscientific definition of "sex." Next slide, please.

I am going to review three actions from the White House, but the summary, the short version, is that the Trump Administration has rolled out a series of devastating attacks against core institutions, including safe and inclusive public schools. TheyÊ?? this is not happening in a vacuum.  These attacks are taking place against the background of an extremist hate movement that has spent years pouring tens of millions of dollars into manufacturing panic over the fact that trans and non?binary students exist and attend school, like every other young person.

The movement to create this moral panic and distort our media, our laws, and our culture includes many of the same people who have been attacking our rights to birth control and to abortion healthcare, which reveals the true goal is not about supporting or protecting any student, but, instead, growing power to police our bodies, how we express our genders, and how we form our close relationships. I would like to highlight this second tactic the most.  The Trump Administration has been relying on us to be misinformed, confused, and, most of all, afraid. They are relying on fear to force many schools to break the law and begin specifically singling out their trans, non?binary, and intersex students for bullying by the same adults who are supposed to protect them and their rights to learn. Next slide, please.  

So you will see here this slide lists three executive orders from the beginning of 2025. The first order listed at the bottom directed every federal agency to use a baseless and harmful definition of sex that is specifically designed to exclude trans, non?binary, and intersex people from recognition by our government, and to make it harder for us to navigate everyday life. These later orders have been encouraging schools to distort teaching about race and gender in our country's history in ways that will harm all students who are entitled to know the truth, even when the truth can be difficult. But especially causes harm by erasing and othering trans, non?binary, and intersex students. And then, of course, we have a February order that pressures schools and athletic associations to categorically ban every transgirl and woman from participating in sports alongside her peers. This is a lawless order that is an abuse of Government power and it is rooted in sexist gender stereotypes, saying that essentially there is no such thing as transgirls and transwomen when this is very far from true.  And these students do have civil rights protections at school that no executive order can take away. The Administration has lied by calling its attempts to bully trans youth for protection for girls and women, when in reality, the existence of trans students is not a threat to anyone. And there are very clear stories showing that when we begin policing the genders of students, all students suffer harm.  And girls and women drop out of school sports because of the sex stereotypes that are baked into these kinds of policies. Next slide, please. 

So, thisÊ?? I'm not going to read every word on this slide, but if we zoom into the issue of school sports, I would like folks to remember that from 2008?2018, we saw trans students playing sports openly under supportive, inclusive, state?wide policies, with zero problems. The first attempts to kick trans students out of school sports, which began in a court case in Connecticut and a state law in Idaho, were bankrolled by a hate group called ADF and other far?right extremists, who were afraid of the coalition that was forming for civil rights in the wake of the marriage equality decision.  

CLAUDIA CENTER:  Auden, you have about one more minute.  

AUDEN PERINO:  I gotcha. Another thing I want to note is federal data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention so in jurisdictions that include and support trans student athletes, we see more girls and women playing sports overall, not less. And then if we can move on to the final slide? I would like to just recall the remarks from my fellow panelists about how the Department of Education has been limited in completing its mission and how specifically the Office for Civil Rights has been distorted in ways that leave disabled students who are experiencing discrimination out in the cold without the support that they need. Whereas resources are being devoted to intimidate schools who include and support their LGBTQI students as they are legally and ethically required to do. It was very harmful in January for the Department of Education to dismiss two complaints that my team worked on in a way that specifically called censorship and book banning a hoax.  It is not a hoax. There are real efforts to resegregate schools and to teach a whitewashed and queerwashed version of history. And the other policies named here are additional efforts by DOJ and ED to intimidate schools and to directly bully trans and non?binary youth. On this next slide, you will also see that other agencies have been directed to do similar actions.

There was aÊ?? there have been multiple investigations against Maine because they support their trans youth and Maine actually had to go to court to fight to restore funding for school lunches and similar child nutrition programs that was under threat, simply because they include and support LGBTQI youth.  Thank you very much 

KARMA QUICK?PANWALA:  Thank you, Auden. I would like to turn this on to Winston to turn this on to student loans and assistance.  

WINSTON BERKMAN?BREEN:  Great.  Thank you so much, everyone, for putting this on and for joining today.  My name is Winston Berkman?Breen with the Student Borrower Protection Center, we all have a task of covering a huge amount of information in a short time and please bear with me as I talk about what's going on with student loans. Generally, it was an already confusing and changing system, and then with respect to what's going on in D.C. right now. So the areas I'm going to touch on the most are public service loan forgiveness and other plans and I want to talk about the disability discharge which provides if a federal student loan borrower with a "total and permanent disability" which is described and established through a couple different means, they can have their federal student loan debts eliminated, basically discharged. This has never been a perfect system, but, again, with recent staff cuts as recently as March, although that's being litigated and a policy ideology that's anti?borrower and anti?low income person, things are getting worse at the Department of Education. So I think this is relevant both in terms of the work to serve communities of people living with disabilities, but also for those service providers who may have problems themselves. So if you'll go to the next slide, please, I'll talk about public service loan forgiveness, those not familiar, it's a program that says if you work for a program for ten years and you make particular payment plans during that time, you can get your debt cancelled after that.

This was a historically and sort of comically dysfunctional program for the first 15 years or so of its existence.  The Biden Administration took a chance to fix the system and it cancelled 1500 people's debts to over one million by the Biden Administration and they didn't do it by acts of Congress but through the existing program work better. They also incorporated something new which we're seeing for the first time now called a buy?back option which said if you had the right job or maybe made a payment or ineligible payment in the past, you can today make a payment that recoup that payment and nothing is for sure, but we will talk about what it is today and wanted to know what it is in the history. And if you'll go to the next slide. So IDR, is one of the payment options for federal student loans based on what you make, not how much you owe, if you are a low?income person you can have a low or zero dollar payment and that counts as a full monthly payment 

CLAUDIA CENTER:  Winston, this is Caludia. I super appreciate you trying us to stay on time, but I've gotten a request for you to slow down for the captioners.  

WINSTON BERKMAN?BREEN:  Okay.  I can slow down but I can't promise staying on time. So for the right job, right payment plans, ten years, you can get your debt cancelled.  It wasn't working.  It's working much better through Biden and we'll talk in a couple slides how it's working under the current Administration. IDR, these are a payment plan and what they do is they offer payments based on your income, not on the amount you owe, so you could owe $500,000 but if you're a low?income person, you can get a lower or zero dollar monthly payment. And this is a real life raft for a lot of folks.  It doesn't ensure affordability but it's more affordable than the regular standard payments. IDR plans also have their own debt forgiveness and the idea is if you are a low payment as the plan provides, you're perhaps never chipping away at the amount you owe, so you could be stuck in a debt trap, so Congress provided that after a certain period of time, generally 20?25 years being on IDR, you can get your debt that remains cancelled. So that's a payment plan that has a cancellation provision built in. This also wasn't working so well and the Biden Administration has also taken steps to fix it, took steps to fix it, and at one point, one million people did this, and in 2019, that was 32 people.  Huge difference. Biden introduced a form called the SAVE plan and if you'll go to the next slide, we'll talk about that and many folks may be familiar with it. And this is the most affordable and it was introduced in 2023, and then a couple of months later, a crew of conservative Republican?led states sued to block it and for the year it's been caught up in litigation. Most recently, in February, the Appeals Court of the eighth circuit upheld this SAVE plan while it's going forward and while the case is being reviewed, it can't be offered. So about eight million people who were in SAVE because it was the most affordable have been put in forbearance or in a state of limbo and they are not being debt free one way or another.

Now, related to the SAVE plan litigation, they took all plans offline, you could not apply or have your application review for that plan unless you were already in it in February, and restored that in March and early April after a teachers union represented by my organization sued in D.C. and that litigation is still ongoing because they haven't gotten up to speed in terms of processing and people are still practically unable to access IDR.

If you go to the next slide, I'll just very briefly say where we are on both of these really critical programs that are both about affordability and being debt?free. So I mentioned buy back is an interesting opportunity to make this work for you, but there's a huge backlog there for you too.  About 50,000 applications.  And we are also looking out to get the forgiveness, the Trump Administration issued an executive order and they said people who do immigration work or trans rights work or anything that the Administration disagrees with, the Department of Education will implement that this summer. And we will start to take the steps and the lawsuit is ripe to be heard, so keep an eye out on that.  But as of today, PSLF, you should get your debts cancelled. And we know from litigation, there are two million applications waiting to be reviewed in a backlog and there are rule makings that will go on to potential change the plans and at the same time, Congress, through the budget process that's happening right now, is threatening to remove the IDR plans and replace them with a less affordable alternative payment. So lots of advocacy going on there and we're seeing a callus Republican?led Congress making life less affordable for people. And layer on top of that, there is no staff left at the Administration in the Department of Education.

And these are all still ongoing and I hate to leave on that sad note, but it is sort of "stay tuned" on the accessibility of these programs going forward, which are really core, affordability, debt?free tools for all borrowers, but especially for those serving certain communities and members of the community living in disabilities.  

KARMA QUICK?PANWALA:  Thank you very much, Winston, for getting through so much information so quickly. This is Karma Quick?Panwala with DREDF.  I would like to move to the next slide, please.

So, what the Department of Education, what might happen next?  Right now, the current Administration wants to move different parts of the Education Department to the Department of Health and Human Services. We don't know where in HHS they want to move those parts or what will happen or which parts of HHS might administer them.
We do know that the Department wants to move student aid to the Small Business Administration, and that they are eliminates Head Start. In the current budget reconciliation that is making its way through Congress, we know that school choice through a federal budget tax credit is on deck, as well as increased discrimination against disabled students, because many of those private schools or religious schools are not required to provide accommodations or special education services to students with disabilities. And what's more, through the reduction of the Medicaid services and funding, in the budget reconciliation vote, we know there will be decreased funding for special education services and counselors covered under Medicaid. For the fiscal year 2026ÊED budget released earlier this week, we know there is a 15% cut overall in funding to special education and to other agencies and organizations receiving federal funding that would affect students with disabilities. We also know that there are $4.5 billion in proposed cuts in K?12 programs including the McKinney Act for homeless youth and other work study programs, the Pell grants will be cut from roughly $7300 to $5700. Next slide, please.

And litigators are fighting back.  There were two cases, each filed against the Administration regarding the cuts and closures of the Office for Civil Rights and the Department of Education. One of those cases was filed by the National Center for Youth Law and the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates and these cases were filed to ask for to be a preliminary injunction or a stop to be granted in their favor to make sure that the Administration is no longer cutting positions or closing offices. Unfortunately, that case, which was filed in Washington, D.C. in the Federal District Court there, the request for preliminary injunction was denied. However, there was a separate but similar case brought in the First DistrictÊ?? excuse me, in the District of Massachusetts in Boston and that was brought by 21 state attorneys, as well as a number of unions and organizations. That case was granted a preliminary injunction to stop the dismissal of federal workers and to stop the closure of OCR offices across the country. And yesterday, the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston upheld that preliminary injunction and denied the Trump Administration's request for a stay, meaning to stop the preliminary injunction and allowed them to continue with those cuts.

So we do want to make sure that people are aware that the litigation is ongoing, that we are starting to see some turn in favor of students and families and people with disabilities in schools across the country. Next slide, please. And with that, I want to turn this over to our next speaker, who I believe is Santiago.  

SANTIAGO OROSCO:  Thank you very much.  Hi, everyone, my name is Santiago Orosco, I use he/him/they/them pronouns and I am the director of organizing at New Disabled South and today I am talking about the impact of a lot of federal policy that's moving and how it's impacting students of immigrant families. First I want to highlight a couple of the executive orders we have seen come out that are impacting folks. First there was on January 20th, an executive order stating that undocumented immigrants must register for a national database. And then on February 20th, to the present, we have seen aÊ?? sorry if y'all can hear my dogs in the background, they're being a little loud right nowÊ?? going back to what I was saying, we have seen a media campaign coming from the Federal Government that has been targeting undocumented immigrants.

The message of this campaign has very much been focused on self?deportation and/or implicating that folks would face imprisonment. And we saw the Department of Homeland Security or DHS had registering and they officially came out with the steps of registering for the database that became effective on April 11. And I'm reading this quote from the National Immigration Law Center which says coming forward will be dangerous for many community members and can lead to detention, deportation, and possibly criminal prosecution. And so these are changes in federal policy that are increasingly problematic for immigrant families and the impact is not only going to be felt on immigrant families. And if we can go to the next slide, we will talk about an executive order that I need to touch on. Next slide, please.  Thank you.

So there was also another executive order issued on the 24th of January this yearÊ?? sorry, that was issued by the Department of Homeland Security.  Rescinded guidance that wasÊ?? sorry, rescinded decade?old guidance regarding in enforcement in sensitive areas including schools and churches and this is a quote from the secretary of DH...  Sorry, I believe this is an undersecretary, which basically says criminals will no longer be able to hide in America's schools and churches to avoid arrest.  That was BenjamineÊHuffman and this is to enforce these and this will not only impact undocumented but also a lot of children coming from homes. And if we can go to the next slide.

We want today highlight some specific research that the foundation has put out what is the physical and emotional and mental impact of these policies will be going on for millions of children of immigrant families. And in their research, they highlighted this is going to impact one in four children nationwide and some of these impacts will increase fear and stress affecting their daily lives, problems sleeping and eating, headaches and stomach aches, mental health, like depression and anxiety, decreased performance in school, reluctance to access programs and services andÊ?? sorryÊ?? sorry, is my audio not coming through correctly? Oh, this was a couple minutes ago.  

CLAUDIA CENTER:  It's a little unclear, but just keep going, Santiago.  

SANTIAGO OROSCO:  Heard, heard. And so I'll end with this, the point I wanted to highlight as part of this conversation is that there are a lot of pieces of federal policy that are moving and targeting undocumented folks, both the executive orders and directives that were explicitly named, but also we're seeing multiple pieces of legislation that get proposed that add on penalties for folks who are undocumented. And so this is just to highlight that there's a lot of policy that's targeting undocumented folks and this is creating a problem where families may choose to not apply for certain social benefit programs, social safety net programs. And that will directly access the healthcare and benefits that students in these families will be able to access. But also there's a very real lack of access to services and healthcare in detention facilities. We have seen instances where U.S. citizen children have been detained alongside their undocumented parents. And so wanting to highlight that even if a student has citizenship themselves, the impact of these policies can still impact them, both directly accessing services, but also the way that their family may participate in federal and state programs. And I will turn it over, I believe Julea is going after me.  

KARMA QUICK?PANWALA:  Julea, we welcome you to speak on this next slide and to give your thoughts.  Thank you.

JULEA SELIAVSKI:  Hi, everyone.  My name is Julea Seliavski.  I use they/them pronouns, I have brown curly?ish frizzy hair, I have brown eyes and dark eyebrows.  I work at the National Disabled Law Students Association, NDLSA, and I work in higher education, K?12, both in Maryland and Central Virginia. This is some background related to me, I was diagnosed autistic my whole life, I was a heavy masker and I was in gifted children that denied me from receiving resources that I needed to succeed.  My parents, we did not have access to great health insurance and did not have access to considering an autism diagnosis. And so I have spent my whole life thinking something was wrong with me, when it reality, I was just autistic and it was actually perfectly fine. But the issue right now is this Trump Administration is pushing back on some of the things that we have progressed with over time. 

But the Department of Education has for a long time been a safety net for some of my rights and people that I serve rights in education. And yes, that net has always had a lot of holes.  I definitely fell through some of them. But rather than mend these holes and patch the net, the Trump Administration has determined that my identity in life is not worthy of protections under the law and slashed the net open. Now, of course the safety net from the Department of Education was also contingent on people feeling safe enough to even get a diagnosis or have the resources and money or even have the right to identify properly the privilege to have a certain identity to be considered for a diagnosis. For example, we know that Black and Brown students are more likely to receive a different type of behavioral diagnosis rather than be seen as autistic or another developmental disability.  They might be seen as disruptive rather than accommodated for for the disability they may actually have.

The current Administration's attack on non?binary students is beyond the law and functioning in existence in education and daily life. So I decided to put this quote up by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and I think many of you have seen it before but the reason I want to talk about it is it not only echo's this current Administration's issues but what we have been trying to fight against for I would say a few decades now, especially in the early 2000's. He says Ò"Autism destroys families, and more importantly, it destroys our greatest resource, which is our children É And these are kids who will never pay taxes, theyÕll never hold a job, theyÕll never play baseball, theyÕll never write a poem, theyÕll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.Ó 

And so from right off the bat, RFK is spewing a rhetoric to say that you even have to have assistance to use a toilet and that isn't the case.  It doesn't matter, it shouldn't matter what assistance you need. But he's spewing this rhetoric that autism itself is a destructive force but it's ableism and dysphagia and I pay taxes and don't get the relief on that. [Sighs]... so this rhetoric is a personal attack.  So 66% of autistic adults have contemplated suicide and 33% have actually attempted.  This is according to a study by Nottingham University.

And here, people can survive but thrive and I should be able to have the resources I need and take a break and not suffer from autistic burnout. I work directly with students advocating for their disability accommodations and this Administration's attack raises concerns for me whether someone is safe to even get a diagnosis.
A lot of the rights that the Department of Education provides for us is contingent on access to healthcare and providing medical documentation that I need an accommodation. But those things prior to this Administration were already affected by intersectional identities.  Non?binary and trans people have to determine the following whether even to fight for our rights or file the OCR complaint. Perhaps I am a Black or Brown person, how will fighting for my rights be perceived on the basis of my skin, accent, gender, identity. Do I have the money to get a proper attorney?  Most attorneys don't take a contingency?based fee which you will pay if you win.

Access to healthcare, am I able to get the proper documentation for a diagnosis?  Most healthcare providers do not provide a diagnosis for autistic adults so people in higher education and especially since women and Black people were very little diagnosed with autism in the early 2000's we have to get diagnosed now as adults. What about our comfort level?  Or our ability to navigate procedures that are difficult?

And the reason I bring this up is I think it's important to talk about what was already going wrong and how this system, how the Trump Administration is backpedalling a lot of progress that has been done with discussion and I advocate a lot for others and I have a lot of experience in doing so, but I want to talk about my personal advocacy. When it comes to my own rights as an autistic non?binary person, I have a really hard time even writing letters for my appeals or reconsideration. And that's because it is personal.  It is personal that this Administration views me as a destruction.  As something that destroys children.  As something that is a burden on the system, when I believe that we are all a benefit to the system.

When I advocate for other students, it's a little bit more separate.  And I'm only able to advocate for so many.  But I have seen many students who aren't able to even use their rights prior to this Administration, because of the heavy burnout and the toll that ableism places on us. In addition, it was already difficult to ascertain the rights of autistic and non?binary people in the past because we weren't necessarily recognized under the law.  I think Auden spoke about this earlier but as a non?binary person language used in the law, I like to call this middle identities.  You don't necessarily recognize the nuances of someone who asks a lot, who is autistic or non?binary person or who may not identify as a transitioning person. And accommodations include non?binary people who might need accommodations for gender dysphoria, which is recognized by the Fourth Circuit and adopted by the regulations. And we have an autism registry and although the Department of Health and Human Services rolled back on this, for some of you who may not know about this, they wanted to create a registry who tracked how many people were autistic and it was going to have negative impacts. When this came out, a lot of people feared getting their children diagnoses and these were children considering the access to getting diagnosed and not doing that because of the fear their children are going to be funneled through a registered program or for whatever else could happen thereÉ

CLAUDIA CENTER:  Julea, you're at time, so if you would wrap up.  

JULEA SELIAVSKI:  Yeah, I can wrap up.  My point is this fear, even though it's not happening, it is continuing, it is causing people to not seek and advocate for their rights and rather than expanding the rights that we have, we are now under a pressure to be able to consider our survival and safety first, rather than even advocating for ourselves. And thank you so much.  I'll pass it on to the next person.  

KARMA QUICK?PANWALA:  Thank you so much, Julea. I will turn this over to Mary Goodwin?Oquendo to talk about the fact that we still do have rights and we can enforce them.  

MARY J. GOODWIN?OQUENDO:  Thank you so much.  You know, I just want to piggyback off of something that Julea said, that the current Administration is going to great lengths, it seems, to make people with disabilities feel as if that they are a burden or we're a burden. And I want to just remind everyone that people with disabilities enrich every space that they're in, whether that's a school, whether it's a place of employment, whether it's an event.  And that's just something that everyone should keep in mind. Now, a few takeaways.  These executive orders that we have been seeing, they're not laws.  These letters from the agency secretaries, like HHS, DOE, DOJ, those are not laws. The laws are the statutes.  So let's look at what's in our toolbox, right.

So, if new federal legislation is proposed, throughout that legislative process, there will be a number of opportunities for members of the community to share their [clearing throat]Ê?? pardon meÊ?? to share their concerns.  Describe their experiences.  Organize and advocate.  That's just something that's built into our legislative process. That takes time.  That isn't something that they can do overnight. The laws that we do have, like the Americans with Disabilities Act, the IDEA, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, those are laws that, more or less, were passed with bipartisan support previously. So that's something else to keep in mind.

Also, the language of the statutes themselves have some safeguards.  So, we don't look to the President, we don't look to the heads of these agencies to define, for example, "disability."  Each of these statutes that I just named, they have their own definition of disability, their own definition of what's a covered entity. Also rules of construction. There are a number of additional safeguards there, right. So I think it wasÊ?? oh, I'm forgetting specifically who said itÊ?? but the statutes also say which agencies are responsible for issuing enforcement regulations. So to the extent that the President has decided that he wants to move to what the Department of Education to HHS, he can't just say it, it's something that has to be passed. The laws also, specifically the IDEA, has a much more detail that I think should be reassuring to people, right.

So the Office for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services providing vocational rehabilitation services to families, schools, districts, and also states, that's built into the language of the law. Additionally, the IDEA says that, for example, the Department of Education Secretary can't issue guidance, informal guidance, that conflicts with the law.  So, again, that's another safeguard here. With regards to the Americans with Disabilities Act, the EEOC, for example, is responsible for issuing regulations dealing with not just employment, but the definition of disability.  The Department of Justice is responsible for Title II and Title III, governments and places like schools and places that my clients have to deal with on a regular basis.

So, look to the law to understand what the Administration and their proponents, what they can and can't do. But when you're looking atÊ?? when you're looking at theirÊ?? the executive orders and the letters that they're releasing, look at it as a clue as to what we must do in organizing. Don't let the fear take you over and paralyze you.  But that's a lot of what I've been seeing. Also, I think it's important to know that there are a lot of protections at the state level.  For example, New York has a state human rights law.  New York City has a human rights law.  California.So also check your state, so that you can avail yourself of those protections as well.

As I mentioned previously, OCR, unfortunately, isn't really reliable at this time, so now I see people looking more toward the state enforcement agencies, like the Human Rights Commission, the Division of Human Rights in New York State, and the California Civil Rights Department as well. And let's see... there are a number of other things.  I know we're a bit behind, so I want to try to [laughs] speed up. But keep asserting your rights.  Keep asking for accommodations in school.  Keep calling out discrimination and retaliation. You can't do it at the federal level, you can do it at the state level. Still, if you want to file a complaint with OCR, do it, because that is your right.  Just know that, practically speaking, it may take some time for them to act on it. But they do have a statutory duty to investigate your complaint. We're seeing how they will play out, but they do have that. Do participate in the IEP process.  File a due process complaint, if needed. Also, you can file a case in state or Federal Court.

And for all of these things that I've just described, you can absolutely consult an attorney to understand your rights.  Consulting an attorney doesn't necessarily mean heading into court. I know myself, for example, I help people behind the scenes all the time, so that they go into these adversarial situations understanding what's at stake, what powers they have, how things can potentially play out. And that's pretty much it. Don't forget that we still have power. And don't fall for the trap of acting out of emotion and then not being rational about things. So that's all.  

KARMA QUICK?PANWALA:  Thank you so much, Mary.  That was a great recap. I do want toÊ?? this is Karma from DREDFÊ?? I do want to make sure all of us remember, this is still the time to be contacting our elected representatives.  And it's still time to be using any of those apps, making calls and knowing where your senators' and representatives' offices are.  If you're able to stop by those offices, please do. Tell them to defend students and to defend the Department of Education.  To defend students' rights to access.  To all of the things that students need to be able to thrive at school to get their education. We have some tools listed on this website and the slides will be shared, the recording will be posted on DREDF's website afterwards to address some of the questions in the chat. 

So please make sure you find these links and use them as you continue to use your voice and your own ability to advocate. And tell your representatives and especially your senators now to defend Medicaid against the billions of dollars in cuts.  This reconciliation bill is current in the Senate and this has turned to our senators to defend Medicaid and make sure we keep it intact, as well as Social Security and Medi?Cal.

Thank you, everyone. I am going to turn this over now for questions.  And we will try to address those. Next slide. Oh, I'm sorry, Claudia is coming up with a couple of updates and then some information.  Claudia, I'll let you take this away.  

CLAUDIA CENTER:  Sure.  Hi, everyone, this is Claudia Center with DREDF, she/her/hers, White woman with brown hair, over 50, with glasses. And I think it's really important that we all try to make our voices heard, and to, if we are able, join protests. One thing we have coming up is the ADA anniversary in July, and that means there are often anniversary events. And we urge people to join existing events or organize your own events and use the occasion to express yourselves against what this Administration is doing to our communities, to people with disabilities and to all regular people who are trying to live and thrive in our communities.

There is a July 21, 2025 rally sponsored by the National Council on Independent Living in D.C. There is a June 16, 2025 rally in Sacramento, California. There are other California rallies being planned.  I believe next week, we'll try to elevate those on our social media. There are cuts being proposed to Medi-Cal, which is California's Medicaid program. And if you don't find a rally, try to contact your state and local disability organizations and ask or try to plan one on your own. Really, what we have right now is we have people power.  And we have the ability to file cases in court. Those are our two tools right now that I see. And so people power means being visible, being loud, and being together, and standing up and fighting back. Thank you.  

I forgot, I was supposed to do this slide as well.  This is still Claudia. So next week, we'll circulate a registration.  We are going to be having a webinar on June 10th, from 10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Pacific Time and we are going to teach people how to file comments on the Federal Register at regulations.gov. There are several anti?civil rights, anti?Section 504 proposals being made by the Department of Energy. And we are concerned that this is a "trial balloon."  This is sort of a first effort to start rolling back civil rights and we want to push back hard. And then we will also have a webinar on defending Medicaid in the Senate.  We haven't scheduled that one yet. But watch your e?mails and social media for announcements.  Thank you.  

KARMA QUICK?PANWALA:  Thank you so much, Claudia, and for your work in putting this together and bringing all of us to the table today to talk. I do want to leave a few minutes for some questions and answers, because I'm sure many of our audience members would like to put a question forward after everything that we have presented today.  

CLAUDIA CENTER:  And this is Claudia.  People should select English if they're an English speaker or Spanish, of course, if they're a Spanish speaker, if we take a live question from a Spanish speaker, if you need to hear in English, and vice versa.   I see a question in the chat:  A number of Congress members' offices have refused to take comments from callers who are not constituents of the member's district or state, even when the caller is contacting the office because the representative or senator sits on a specific committee, considering certain bills or issues. Are they allowed to refuse to register comments? Does anyone on our team want to answer that?  

KARMA QUICK?PANWALA:  Hi, Julea.  

JULEA SELIAVSKI:  So they don't have an affirmative duty to have to hear your comments if you are not a constituent, but it's sometimes an alternative option is to actually call your elected official or someone within your state, even if you're not a constituent, and emphasize that you can name some people in other states and ask for them to, you know, try to work together with that Congress person to change their mind or advocate on your behalf to that specific person.

That is something effective because people in Congress are often working together in the back, you know, on the back?end and you can at least ask your own representative and say hey, this person is advocating this way, can you please help with informing their decision and that can assist them.

Now, sometimes you can try to get your Congress push through to those who are not your constituents, sometimes an e?mail will at least work because they will at least look at the e?mail and read it; that way you aren't filtered through the phone call process.  

KARMA QUICK?PANWALA:  Okay.  Thank you for those two questions. I do not see any other hands up at this time.  And we are currently at noon. So, with any closing remarks, I would just like to say we really appreciate all of you coming here and attending this meeting. We hope it was informative and helpful, as you are making your way forward in your work or in your life, or supporting for people with disabilities today. We will continue to have additional webinars here at DREDF throughout the summer as we make our way towards the anniversary of the ADA and please come to DREDF's website and check out our events page to keep informed. And Claudia, I will turn it over to you for any closing remarks.  

CLAUDIA CENTER:  Thank you, everyone!  We're going to just keep fighting together. Thank you for coming!

[End of transcript]



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