OCR Isn’t Moving to DOJ. DOJ’s Enforcement Role Is Growing.
ED’s Kansas announcement shows what the new OCR-DOJ partnerships may look like when schools refuse voluntary compliance.
Recent headlines say U.S. Department of Education’s (ED) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is being “moved” to U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and associated articles have expressed concern over DOJ’s involvement. These followed a June 16, 2026, press release issued by ED.
And yet . . . DOJ has been handling special education-related civil rights cases for years, including investigating school districts for restraint, seclusion, discriminatory discipline, police referrals, segregation, and denial of equal access for students who have disabilities.
The real story isn’t whether ED is moving to DOJ and DOJ is moving into special education civil rights. They’re not.
The real story is DOJ’s level of involvement and whether DOJ will now take on more of the cases families usually file with OCR, and whether it will more often use the power OCR doesn’t have by itself, to seek federal court enforcement when state education agencies or school districts refuse to comply.
That point became clearer June 30, 2026, when ED announced that its Student Privacy Policy Office (SPPO), will work with DOJ in a Kansas FERPA matter.
ED said SPPO found in April 2026 that Kansas City, Kansas Public School District had policies that violated FERPA. ED proposed a resolution agreement. ED said the district still refused to come into voluntary compliance. Now, ED says SPPO and DOJ’s Civil Rights Division’s involvement will take “appropriate enforcement measures,” including possible court proceedings and possible loss of federal funding.
Although the Kansas case isn’t a special education case, students who have disabilities and their families should pay attention because it provides an example of how ED may use DOJ under the agreements announced June 16, 2026.
This Isn’t Just About OCR
The June 16, 2026, announcement didn’t just announce an OCR-DOJ civil rights partnership. The same press release also announced a separate SPPO-DOJ partnership. ED said DOJ would partner with ED on civil rights enforcement, student privacy protection, and training and advisory services. It also said federal civil rights enforcement would continue and that ED would retain all statutory authorities and functions.
That SPPO piece got less attention by news outlets than OCR. Yet, it may now be the clearest public example of how DOJ’s role could work in practice.
ED’s student privacy fact sheet says DOJ will primarily review privacy complaints, conduct needed investigations, and recommend possible resolutions. ED will keep management of SPPO and final authority over enforcement decisions. The Kansas announcement then showed that ED is willing to use DOJ when a district refuses voluntary compliance.
It doesn’t say OCR has been abolished, has left ED, or that families should stop filing complaints with OCR. ED’s civil rights fact sheet says the OCR-DOJ partnership will not change how students, parents, and advocates file complaints. It says anyone who believes discrimination occurred in an education program or activity may still file with OCR.
But the same fact sheet says the partnership will “leverage DOJ’s enforcement powers” to create a stronger enforcement operation alongside OCR, suggeting DOJ may do more than wait for rare referrals at the end of an OCR case.
So . . . The better framing is this: OCR isn’t moving out of ED. DOJ has already handled education civil rights cases, including special education-related disability cases, but DOJ may now become a larger enforcement arm for ED.
DOJ Has Already Handled Special Education Civil Rights Cases
DOJ’s Civil Rights Division includes an Educational Opportunities Section. DOJ says that section enforces federal civil rights laws in schools. It also enforces Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which bars disability discrimination by state and local governments, including public schools.
DOJ’s special education-related work has been especially clear in restraint and seclusion cases.
Just a few months ago, in February 2026, DOJ found that the Special School District of St. Louis violated Title II of the ADA through its seclusion and restraint practices. DOJ said the district secluded more than 300 students almost 4,000 times and restrained almost 150 students 777 times during the two-year period it reviewed. DOJ also said the district used seclusion in cases involving self-harm and used dangerous supine restraints.
About this time last year, DOJ entered into a settlement with Montcalm Area Intermediate School District in Michigan to address discriminatory seclusion and restraint of students with disabilities. The agreement required the district to eliminate seclusion, limit restraint to situations involving imminent danger of serious physical harm, document restraints, and review or modify IEPs for students who had been secluded or restrained.
These two—and the many other cases DOJ has investigated—have been significant civil rights cases about children who have disabilities being isolated, restrained, removed from learning, referred to law enforcement, or placed in inferior settings because adults failed to provide appropriate support.
OCR Handled Most Complaints, But DOJ Was Always Part of the System
Before the new agreements, most school-based disability civil rights complaints went to OCR. However, DOJ wasn’t outside the system.
OCR’s own complaint procedures say that if “the recipient does not agree to correct its noncompliance with the civil rights law(s) by entering into a resolution agreement, OCR may initiate proceedings to suspend, terminate, or refuse to grant or continue Federal financial assistance to the recipient, or may refer the case to the Department of Justice.”
For example, in a Utah case involving San Juan County School District, DOJ’s court filing said OCR had been unable to secure voluntary compliance, warned the district that the matter would be referred to DOJ for judicial enforcement, and then referred the matter to DOJ after the district failed to comply.
In another example, this time in Denver, DOJ said it became involved after OCR investigated Denver Public Schools (DPS), found that DPS wasn’t appropriately serving students with limited English skills, and referred the matter to DOJ. The later agreement also required DPS to ensure that students with disabilities had access to appropriate language services.
So the issue isn’t whether DOJ can be involved and if it has staff with experience addressing special education-related complaints. It can and it does. The issue is how often DOJ will be involved, how early DOJ will be involved, and whether DOJ will use court power more often when schools and states refuse real correction.
Why the Kansas FERPA Case Matters to Special Education Families
Before ED’s June 30 Kansas announcement, a key unanswered question was whether DOJ’s new role would be mostly administrative or whether DOJ would become a more active enforcement partner.
The Kansas announcement points toward DOJ being an active enforcement partner.
ED said SPPO found Kansas City, Kansas Public School District had policies that violated FERPA, that ED proposed a resolution agreement, and that the school division continued to ignore federal law. Now, ED says SPPO and DOJ’s Civil Rights Division will pursue enforcement measures, including applicable judicial proceedings and possible loss of federal funding.
If DOJ uses that model for serious special education civil rights cases it could mean more pressure on school divisions to come into compliance.
The Possible Upside
OCR has been slow for many families. Complaints have sat anywhere from months to over a decade.
Even when OCR finds a violation, the usual remedy is a voluntary resolution agreement. Those agreements can help, but only if they are monitored well and actually change practice.
DOJ has tools OCR doesn’t have by itself. For example, DOJ can litigate and put more pressure on a state or district that refuses to comply. This matters in special education because some districts don’t change after one complaint, one finding, or one training. My neck of the woods offers one example: OCR found Fairfax County Public Schools’s (FCPS) COVID-era practices to be discriminatory. That was November 2022. Although OCR required specific corrective actions by specific deadlines, parents continue to wait for FCPS to fully implement corrective actions that align with its resolution agreement with OCR.
If DOJ’s larger role means more court enforcement against repeated restraint, seclusion, discriminatory removals, segregated placement, and denial of equal access, students with disabilities could benefit.
The Possible Downside
Special education civil rights complaints aren’t simple. A good investigator must understand IEPs, 504 plans, behavior intervention plans, manifestation determinations, related services, placement, transportation, communication, assistive technology, accessibility, parent participation, compensatory education, and more.
DOJ has handled serious disability cases, but OCR has been the front door for most school discrimination complaints. It’s where families go, hence the thousands of complaints filed with OCR.
If DOJ focuses only on cases that are politically useful or likely to produce litigation, families may still be left with delay, dismissal, and no remedy.
Bottom Line
DOJ has been investigating and addressing special education-related civil rights violations for years.
Now the question is whether DOJ will use its power more often when students with disabilities are harmed and schools refuse to fix it.
The June 30 Kansas press release shows that ED is already using the new SPPO-DOJ partnership when a district refuses voluntary compliance. ED says that partnership may include court proceedings and possible loss of federal funding.
This doesn’t prove DOJ will sue more states and districts in special education civil rights cases, but it does show that DOJ’s role is more than theoretical.
It would be hard to explain using DOJ forcefully for privacy cases while not using it for serious disability cases involving restraint, seclusion, discriminatory removals, segregated placement, denial of equal access, and so on. Still, ED hasn’t said that OCR disability cases will follow the same trigger SPPO used in Kansas.
Will DOJ’s larger role mean faster investigations, stronger remedies, real monitoring, and court enforcement when districts refuse to comply?
Will DOJ use its power more often when students with disabilities are harmed and schools refuse to address the harm?