Limited civil rights enforcement resources were prioritized to resolve cases related to pronoun usage and alleged book banning under the Biden administration, while hundreds of civil rights cases pertaining to antisemitism went unresolved, according to a senior Education Department official who spoke to Fox News Digital.
Almost 200 antisemitism complaints filed with the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), either in the early evaluation stages or in later investigatory stages, were left unresolved under the Biden administration, according to the official.
More than 150 of those unresolved complaints, according to the official, were filed after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack that killed nearly 1,200 innocent people and sparked an Israeli military campaign in Gaza that led to an uptick in anti-Israel sentiment across the United States, especially on college campuses.
“The Biden administration placed an undue burden on OCR by stretching the scope of civil rights law beyond its statutory purview,” said Julie Hartman, a Department of Education spokesperson. “The Trump OCR is cleaning that up daily. By enforcing the law as it is written, the Trump administration’s OCR is using its personnel and resources responsibly and eliminating wasteful and unfounded investigations.”
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So far, the Trump administration has dismissed at least 11 complaints related to so-called “book bans” across the country, which alleged that school districts’ removal of content deemed by parents as age-inappropriate violated students’ civil rights.
The Trump administration also reversed the Biden administration’s decision to include “gender identity” within the scope of Title IX and instructed educational institutions receiving federal funds to halt the continuance of what the Trump administration has called racially discriminatory diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
“[The Biden administration] expanded the sex-based protections of Title IX to include gender identity, thereby creating a whole avenue of issues, such as pronoun misgendering cases, which would be pursued by OCR investigators as possibly constituting discrimination,” Hartman said. “Similarly, the previous administration’s OCR stretched Title VI to its breaking point by claiming DEI, which is often racially discriminatory, was consistent with Title VI, incentivizing educational institutions to double down on DEI programming and policies lest they risk meritless Title VI investigations.”
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Under Biden, civil rights officials also let a complaint against transgender swimmer Lia Thomas languish without any resolution, the senior agency official confirmed. In March 2022, Thomas became the first transgender woman swimmer to win a Division I national championship after tying a biologically female opponent, setting off a firestorm over whether transgender athletes should be allowed to compete in women’s sports.
Shortly after taking office, Trump signed an executive order withholding federal funding from any schools allowing biological males, such as Thomas, to compete in women’s sports.
Trump also signed an early executive order to combat the rise in antisemitism since Oct. 7, 2023, and established a Justice Department task force to help hold educational institutions accountable. In March, the Education Department announced it had sent letters to 60 institutions of high education warning them of potential civil rights violations if they do not adequately protect their Jewish students as required under Title VI.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s effort to dismantle the Department of Education has led critics to claim its civil rights enforcement, in particular related to students with disabilities, has tanked.
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But according to a senior OCR attorney, the Trump administration’s disability-related OCR resolutions have been on par with the pace of the previous administration.
So far, since the Trump administration took over, more than 200 disability-related complaints have been opened, the official indicated. The administration has also closed 100 disability-related civil rights cases filed with the Education Department since Trump’s inauguration in January.
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