Key Points:
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Federal disability complaint system slowed by staffing cuts
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Handoff to states puts more focus on state-level complaint system
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Advocates plan to revamp conversation around complaint coverage
With empty desks and a heavy caseload at the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, advocates for families with disabilities anticipate a pivot away from the federal route for discrimination complaint resolution.
Instead, attorneys and a policy expert expect new attention to the state level complaint system and the statutory plan constructed to protect students with disabilities in the next legislative session.
“It is a very tough time to be a student with a disability in general,” Amanda Glass, education team managing attorney at Disability Rights Arizona, said. “Technically, you do still have protections. The laws still exist. But as we’ve discussed, your enforcement options are becoming more and more limited.”
The Office of Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education is tasked with enforcing discrimination complaints dealing with Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 at any K-12 or higher education institution in receipt of federal funding.
In the past, Glass said, her office would recommend the Office of Civil Rights as a strong starting point for resolving disability discrimination complaints.
The complaint process starts with a summary of the alleged events. From there, investigators with OCR would frame the set of facts within the law and pursue public records, subpoenas, interviews and return with a finding and eventual settlement or corrective action.
“The beauty of all that was that a parent could file. You didn’t need a lawyer. It was free of charge. The enforcement agency did all the work of investigating, and then you could get a remedy that is potentially comparable to what you would get if you filed a lawsuit,” Glass said.
Since the change in administration, the U.S. Department of Education has cut its employee count in half and closed seven of the 12 OCR offices across the country.
A database of pending cases has not been updated since January. At the time of the last update, more than 12,000 cases were pending nationally and 269 were open in Arizona.
Publicly, OCR has more prominently taken up and kept an eye on Title VI, in the realm of diversity, equity and inclusion and consideration of race in admissions, financial aid, hiring and training, as well as Title IX, specifically as it pertains to transgender girls’ ability to access gender-aligned restrooms, locker rooms and sports teams.
According to the department, from January to July, about 89% of the cases OCR closed with resolution agreements and negotiated settlement agreements are disability-related and plans to increasingly use mediation and expedited case processing to address disability-related complaints.
“To better serve American students and families, changes are being made as to how OCR will conduct its operations. OCR’s staff is composed of top-performing personnel with years of experience enforcing federal civil rights laws,” Madi Biedermann, deputy assistant secretary for communications at the U.S. Department of Education, said in a statement. “We are confident that the dedicated staff of OCR will deliver on its statutory responsibilities while working to resolve the longstanding backlog left by the previous administration.”
Glass noted that this year she had seen some pending cases resolved but has not filed any new complaints because of rationed staff and a shift in priority areas of the current administration.
“It’s really no longer a viable option,” Glass said.
That leaves the state complaint system – the Exceptional Student Services Dispute Resolution Unit – reserved for students with an individualized education plan (IEP) with protections under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to ensure a free, appropriate public education.
The state level complaint system functions similarly to OCR in taking a complaint, performing an administrative inquiry into whether a violation occurred and ultimately issuing an official report with corrective action if necessary.
At the Arizona Department of Education, there has been a slight uptick in complaints submitted in 2025, as compared to the same period in 2024.
From January to August 12, 2024, the department received a total of 77 complaints meeting investigative standards. In the same period this year, the department received 90, with 14 active pending complaints.
Glass said in the past she would typically opt for the federal route, but did not count out the state complaint system entirely.
Disability Rights Arizona saw through a complaint on behalf of a student at the Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and Blind after the student was removed from the school due to an autism diagnosis, incorrectly placed outside of his home district and left without the speech and occupational therapy and counseling services required in his IEP.
The report, issued in January of this year, requires ASDB to work with a special monitor to ensure the student receives the education and support he was initially entitled to, perform an audit of records of all students who did not receive services required by their IEPs, develop a plan to avoid the same issue in the future and train staff on IDEA requirements.
Though Glass lauded the success, she noted the state complaint still leaves out complainants with claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504, which could be an opening for the Legislature to create a more robust state level enforcement mechanism.
Karla Phillips-Krivickas, longtime policy advocate for students with disabilities and co-founder and director of strategic partnerships and policy for Champions for Kids, said the state complaint system sits at the top of the priority list for the next legislative session.
“Federal law is always the bottom, it’s the floor, it’s not the ceiling,” Phillips-Krivickas said. “The intent of IDEA is to create a complaint system that the state would run, but they were given maximum leeway to do it. Most states are doing the bare minimum.”
Phillips-Krivickas said the challenge going forward is mapping out the gaps, which proves difficult with the narrow reach of the current complaint system.
And Phillips-Krivickas emphasized the importance of getting a more systematic view, likening the current complaint process to a game of “whack-a-mole.”
“Even if the system works – we help this family, another pops up, we help this family, another pops up – we’re not addressing systemic issues,” Phillips-Krivickas said.
As for the next legislative session, Champions for Kids, a new organization headed by Phillips-Krivickas, hopes to start a dialogue on state complaints, though sooner than anticipated given the gradual hand-off of more education duties to the states.
“My short term has changed, honestly, because of what’s happening at the federal level,” Phillips-Krivickas said. “When I started this work a year ago, I would not have put state complaint so high. But now it’s very much at the top of our list of things we need to address.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
