Civil rights advocates have been highly critical of the new guidelines put in place under the direction of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. | Win McNamee/Getty Images DeVos rewrites rules for school civil rights probes

The Trump administration has overhauled the rules for investigating discrimination in the nation's schools in a way that the Education Department says will boost efficiency but advocates fear will weaken enforcement of civil rights.

The new guidelines are the latest in a series of actions under the direction of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos that have led civil rights groups and Democrats to blast the Trump administration for "diminishing" civil rights enforcement — a major focus of former President Barack Obama’s Education Department. The administration has rescinded protections for transgender students, is changing rules for campuses handling allegations of sexual assault and has closed civil rights complaints at twice the rate of its predecessor.


The changes appear to be in line with a goal of sifting more quickly through the thousands of civil rights complaints the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights receives each year. The changes appear in a new version of the Office for Civil Right's Case Processing Manual, posted to the department's website and dated effective March 5.

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Among the changes: The new manual scraps all mentions of "systemic" investigations, continuing an effort by the Trump administration to narrow the scope of civil rights probes. It also eliminates an appeals process for students who say they faced discrimination and gives complainants less time to provide evidence to investigators.

Education Department spokeswoman Liz Hill said: "As [the Office for Civil Rights] continues to work on behalf of students to ensure their civil rights are protected and their cases are handled thoroughly in a timely manner, the office has undertaken a routine revision of its CPM to improve efficiency, effectiveness and clarity." The new manual includes recommendations from and was reviewed by civil rights staff.

Hill said the Obama administration focus on systemic investigations led to a massive backlog of complaints and said the civil rights office will "certainly open a systemic investigation when the facts of the case warrant one." She pointed out that DeVos recently announced a Title IX investigation into "systemic issues" around Michigan State University's handling of reports of sexual violence against Larry Nassar.

But civil rights advocates were highly critical. "The decision to excise 'systemic' from the manual and — more importantly — from the work of [the Office for Civil Rights] means that they will be pursuing Whack-a-Mole justice, rather than change that actually addresses the systemic barriers to education faced by children of color, immigrant children, LGBTQ children, children with disabilities, and other marginalized children around the country," said Miriam Rollin, director of the National Center for Youth Law, a nonprofit law firm.

The new manual is the first update to the guide since 2015.

In the change on systemic investigations, civil rights investigators in the past were told to gather years of data from a school to ensure that any potential problems did not extend beyond the specific complaint they were investigating. The Trump administration has sought to narrow that scope, asking investigators to focus only on the complaints in front of them.

The new guide also uses language that instructs investigators to dismiss allegations under a wider array of circumstances. The past manual listed 10 instances where investigators "may" dismiss complaints — if the student withdraws a complaint or if the civil rights office recently investigated a similar complaint, for example. In most of those instances, the old manual gave investigators leeway to keep the probe going if they believed systemic problems could be uncovered.

The new manual shifts all but one of those to a section telling investigators they "will" dismiss cases under those circumstances. It also adds language saying investigators will dismiss complaints if they are “no longer appropriate for investigation” — a new avenue for dismissal.

The new manual also scraps an appeals process for parents and students who disagree with investigators' findings and shortens the time that complainants have to provide additional information to the civil rights office from 20 days to 14.

"You put all the pieces together and it severely impacts all student complaints of discrimination across the country," said Paul Castillo, a senior attorney and students’ rights strategist at Lambda Legal, a nonprofit that seeks full recognition of the civil rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and people living with HIV. Castillo also worked as a civil rights investigator for the department in the Obama administration.

The Trump administration has moved more swiftly to resolve complaints than its predecessor. Investigators closed 17,787 cases in 2017 — more than double the number of cases resolved the year before, according to documents released with the administration's recent budget request.

The new manual makes many of the same changes as a draft version obtained by the Associated Press last year.