Despite entering the last four years with a backlog of complaints and encountering a record surge of new ones, including many involving antisemitism related to the Israel-Hamas war, the Office of Civil rights (OCR) of the federal Department of Education (DOE) achieved “groundbreaking and consequential” results in many of those cases.

In a report issued during the final week of the Biden-Harris administration, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Catherine E. Lhamon at the DOE highlighted the problems and successes the department experienced in resolving those cases.

“These four years have involved both unprecedented challenges to educational opportunity as well as an expansion of the kinds of discrimination school communities have persistently experienced over time,” stated the report. “OCR has nonetheless secured unqualified wins for civil rights and delivered the justice Congress has long charged the Office to safeguard.”

The report noted at the beginning of Biden’s term there was a backlog of 915 cases pending that were four or more years old. Additionally, OCR received the highest number of complaints in its history for three consecutive fiscal years, closing out the last fiscal year with an all-time high of 22,687 complaints filed in a single year—a 64% increase over the complaint volume received during the previous administration.

The OCR oversees enforcement of civil rights law and nondiscrimination policies for the more than 49 million students in pre-K-12 schools and the more than 19 million students in colleges and universities.

Overall during the past four years, OCR received a record number of 71,385 cases and resolved more than 56,000 cases, including a backlog of previous cases. The report took note of a recent “proliferation of hate” in schools and the increasing demands it placed on OCR.

In addition to the increased volume of complaints received, OCR was forced to deal with issues and complexities it had never encountered before, such as “challenges raised in a pandemic context” and dealing with issues surrounding the use of artificial intelligence in schools, even as Congress refused to grant it budget increases requested by the administration to meet those challenges by hiring additional staff.

Other emerging issues OCR dealt with included sex discrimination in accessing equal athletic opportunity in school, the rights of students against discrimination based on stereotypes about their national origin or shared religious or other ancestral identities and civil rights guardrails when considering and imposing discipline related to students with disabilities.

Much of the report dealt with the significant resources OCR devoted to addressing the discrimination based on shared ancestry or ethnicity, including opening and resolving more investigations on the issue, securing more resolutions, issuing more policy resources and offering more technical assistance training than prior administrations.

In particular, since the terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023, OCR has issued reminders to schools, producing numerous fact sheets, that under Title VI of the federal Civil Rights Act that they had a legal obligation to provide students who are or are perceived to be Jewish, Israeli, Muslim, Arab or Palestinian with an educational environment free from discrimination.

In giving examples of the impact OCR’s enforcement has had, the report included an op-ed written by the executive director of the University of Vermont’s Hillel in which the director said back in 2019 a group of “brave Jewish students had finally had enough of the antisemitic hatred they faced and could no longer continue being ignored.” They pleaded with Hillel to advocate for them.

In 2021, when a campus sexual assault survivor student group expelled a Jewish woman for “being a Zionist,” the university’s response was indifference.

Jewish students, after a long waiting period, were told by the university nothing could be done because it was a matter of free speech and not antisemitism. Students were left “rejected and dejected” and some students felt their entire experience at Vermont had revolved around antisemitism and the battle to get the university to recognize it. However, after the Jewish community filed a complaint with OCR, it took action and forced the university to institute policy changes. As a result, said the director, today university Jewish life is “thriving.”

In a statement the Anti-Defamation League said, “We urge OCR under the new Administration to continue this commitment to civil rights, prioritizing cases of antisemitism and issuing further guidance and resources to combat the troubling rise of antisemitic and anti-Zionist harassment and discrimination in K-12 schools and on college and university campuses.”

Cardona has warned about eliminating the DOE and its vital role, but President Donald Trump has vowed to shut down the department, a pledge he also made during his first term, but never followed through on. He has nominated Linda McMahon as DOE secretary. She is the former co-founder and CEO of the WWE professional wrestling and led the Small Business Administration during his previous administration.

Debra Rubin has had a long career in journalism writing for secular weekly and daily newspapers and Jewish publications. She most recently served as Middlesex/Monmouth bureau chief for the New Jersey Jewish News. She also worked with the media at several nonprofits, including serving as assistant public relations director of HIAS and assistant director of media relations at Yeshiva University.