This blog was updated on March 21, 2025
The Trump administration issued an executive order directing the Education Department Secretary Linda McMahon to begin dismantling the department, eroding its ability to carry out the responsibilities Congress has mandated by law.
The Education Department (ED) has historically played a critical role in protecting civil rights, promoting equity, and providing opportunities for all students, including those in marginalized communities, students with disabilities, LGBTQ students, and multilingual learners. This reckless action strips students of vital resources and tears down statutorily mandated functions that are essential to addressing racial and economic inequality in education. It also threatens decades of bipartisan progress toward educational fairness and reverses the commitment of previous administrations — Republican and Democrat alike — to ensure equal access to education. As the Supreme Court unanimously recognized in Brown v. Board of Education, public education “is the very foundation of good citizenship.”
What Happens If the Department of Education is Eliminated?
The ED has a congressionally-mandated duty to ensure the best education for all children. As part of that responsibility, the department must ensure that students with disabilities can learn and thrive alongside their peers, that educational equity is upheld for children of all races, that religious freedom is protected, and that protecting against sex-based discrimination -- including against LGBTQ students -- remains a priority in schools nationwide.
President Donald Trump refuses to accept this mandate. Instead, he is attempting to dismantle the ED — undermining its ability to safeguard these critical protections — and weaponizing the department to carry out a deeply unpopular political agenda.
Without the ED, the federal government’s capacity to collect data is eviscerated, which is an essential resource for identifying and addressing disparities in education. Without this oversight, school districts won’t be held accountable for unjustified racial and disability disparities in discipline, academic performance, and access to resources. Policies based on data, which have helped reduce discriminatory discipline practices and promote equity for marginalized students, are now at risk.
The ED is also statutorily mandated to enforce national student privacy laws and to provide students and parents an avenue to challenge abuses of their privacy. Without those protections, information about students’ grades, discipline, medical history and families’ income may be used for purposes they never agreed to — and even being weaponized in President Trump’s deportation machine.
How Will These Cuts Affect Students’ Civil Rights?
Trump’s plans threaten protections and funding provided under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which guarantees that children with disabilities have access to a free and appropriate public education. Without the department to enforce these protections, millions of students who rely on IDEA for necessary accommodations, such as specialized instruction and assistive technology, are at risk of losing access to the education they are legally entitled to receive.
The ED reportedly also terminated all staff in seven of the Office of Civil Rights’ (OCR) 12 regional offices. Gutting the OCR severely weakens federal civil rights enforcement, leaving millions of students without crucial protections against discrimination based on race, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, LGBT status, disability, and age. It also suppresses students’ ability to seek justice when their rights are violated and allows discriminatory practices. This includes uneven and unfair targeting of students of color and students with disabilities for school discipline, inequitable access to advanced coursework, the refusal to provide accommodations to students with disabilities, and discrimination against students with limited English proficiency or English learner status to persist unchecked.
By stripping the Education Department of staff and resources, key federal grant programs are also at risk, including Title I funding, which provides critical support to more than half of the nation’s public schools serving a high concentration of low-income students, and federal student loans, grants, and work-study programs. Abandoning the long-standing federal commitment to ensuring that schools with the greatest needs receive additional resources will disproportionately harm students of color and exacerbate racial inequities in education.
How Can We Push Back on These Attacks?
For more than a century, the ACLU has been at the forefront of the fight for educational equity, including arguing in Brown v. Board that “segregation and equality cannot coexist. That which is unequal in fact cannot be equal in law.” Today, the educational landscape still denies marginalized students access to quality learning environments, undermining the very principles that Brown sought to establish.
Attacks on the ED are an attack on the progress we have made to advance educational equity. The ACLU is calling on Congress to act immediately to restore the federal government’s role in enforcing civil rights. We must ensure students with disabilities receive educational services, maintain transparency through data collection, and promise that students in low-income communities are not left behind.