A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from laying off thousands of government employees, including nearly all of the workers in the Department of Education’s special education division — a move advocates have warned would have disastrous consequences for millions of students across the country, including 827,000 in California.
Before the ruling was issued, the layoffs had wiped out the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, including its Office of Special Education Programs, which ensures children with disabilities receive a free, quality education under federal law and oversees around $16 billion in special education funding. Nearly 500 education department employees were let go, including more than 100 staffers who worked in the special education division. Employees in the department’s Office for Civil Rights, which is responsible for enforcing federal civil rights laws in schools and protecting students with disabilities from discrimination, were also laid off.
In a social media post Wednesday, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the government shutdown has forced agencies to re-evaluate what federal responsibilities are “truly critical” for Americans, and reaffirmed the Department of Education is “unnecessary.”
The layoffs follow the Trump administration’s layoffs in March, when the Department of Education slashed nearly 50% of the department’s workforce — a move that was challenged by several states, including California, but was ultimately successful thanks to a Supreme Court ruling in July.
In her post Wednesday, McMahon said no education funding, including funding for special education, has been impacted by the layoffs. But advocates pointed out that nearly every person in charge of administering and overseeing the billions of dollars dispersed to states through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act was fired, and the pending layoffs threaten funding for years to come.
“The department was way understaffed to do what they do prior to last Friday’s cuts,” said Chad Rummel, the executive director of the Council for Exceptional Children, a nonprofit advocacy group for students with disabilities. “There’s simply no way that anything’s going to get done with the few employees that are left.”
Rummel said the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services is responsible for ensuring states are complying with special education law and that state funding is spent appropriately. He said the office also provides support and resources for educators and schools and serves as a safety net for parents through the Office of Civil Rights, which handles complaints and investigations when discrimination against students is suspected. But because of the downsizing of staff in the education department, Rummel said the Office of Civil Rights — which had more than 10,000 backlogged cases when McMahon was appointed — now has more than 25,000 backlogged cases — more than half of which are special education cases. And there’s little to no staff left to handle them, Rummel said.
California received $1.5 billion in special education funding from the federal government for the 2024-25 school year, according to the California Department of Education. According to Disability Rights California, a nonprofit disability rights group, that funding supports nearly 14% of all of California’s students and supplements everything from Individualized Education Programs and community-led groups to resources for parents and education for teachers.
“The domino effect of the gutting of these agencies may mean that special education programs that previously ran steadily would have to essentially lobby the California Department of Education for their funding in competition with other public goods, fighting anew for the civil rights protections and supports that have been enshrined in law for decades,” the organization said in a statement.
Rummel said before 1975, students with disabilities in the U.S. were not allowed to attend school or were segregated from their peers and not taught. The federal government stepped in to create the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, ensuring equity across all states and promising a free, appropriate public education for all students.
But school districts don’t always follow the law, said Allegra Cira Fischer, a senior policy attorney with Disability Rights California. And it can be confusing and overwhelming for parents to navigate the process, especially if they’re encountering pushback from the school, she added. If a student isn’t getting the services they need, parents can file a complaint with the California Office of Administrative Hearings or the federal civil rights office.
But the process can be difficult to understand without the assistance of a lawyer, which can be costly. The staff at the Office of Civil Rights who are tasked with helping families file complaints have been laid off, Rummel pointed out.
“There’s no one answering the phones. There’s no one taking those complaints right now. There’s no one responding to them,” Rummel said. “They can barely get the complaints logged, let alone actually investigate them. So that safety net’s completely gone for parents unless they have funding to file a lawsuit.”
There are currently 129 Free and Public Education open investigations according to the Office of Civil Rights and 378 special education California cases for the 2024-25 fiscal year. According to an EdSource analysis in 2021, California sees far more special education disputes on average than most other states, and parents’ requests for mediation in California represented nearly half of the requests nationwide in 2018-19.
Rummel said the crisis at the special education division is a prime example of the disastrous consequences shutting down the Department of Education would have on students and schools across the country.
“We’re only saving a few million dollars by cutting these employees, but we’re throwing the entire system into chaos. We’re not just pulling a brick out of the wall. We’re pulling the whole wall down right now,” Rummel said. “This is a five-alarm fire. … This is not fearmongering. This is not us trying to scare people right now. There’s been an elimination, and there’s no plan in place.”