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The Trump administration squandered as much as $38 million in taxpayer funds by paying federal civil rights investigators to stay home while dismissing roughly 90% of discrimination complaints filed by students across the country, according to a new Government Accountability Office report released this week
The report, commissioned by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), examines the fallout from the administration's attempted dismantling of the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights, which enforces federal nondiscrimination laws protecting students on the basis of race, sex, disability, national origin and age.
In March 2025, the Education Secretary Linda McMahon issued reduction-in-force notices to 299 of OCR's 575 employees and closed seven of the agency's 12 regional offices. The targeted staff were placed on paid administrative leave and prohibited from working for nine months while legal challenges worked through federal courts.
"Every child in America should be able to get a good education no matter where they live, what their religious beliefs are or whether or not they have a disability," said Sanders. "Instead, the Trump administration fired half of the Education Department employees working to protect the civil rights of students and wasted as much as $38 million in taxpayer dollars by preventing investigators from doing their jobs."
The GAO calculated that paying salaries and benefits for idled OCR staff from March through mid-December 2025 cost between $28.5 million and $38 million. During October's government shutdown, the administration issued an additional 137 RIF notices that would have reduced OCR to just 62 employees—roughly 10% of its 2024 staffing level.
While nearly 500 investigators sat on administrative leave, OCR received more than 9,000 discrimination complaints between March and September 2025. The agency resolved 7,072 cases during that period, dismissing 6,353 of them—approximately 90%—without full investigation.
Education officials told GAO that OCR "kept up with its workload and met its mission" despite the staff reductions. However, the GAO report notes OCR has not updated its public list of institutions under investigation since January 2025, leaving parents and students without transparency about ongoing civil rights enforcement.
