GAO Finds Civil Rights Staff Cuts Cost Taxpayers Up to $38 Million
The Department of Education’s attempt to slash its civil rights enforcement workforce in half backfired costing taxpayers between $28.5 million and $38 million for employees who were banned from working while still on the payroll, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
In March 2025, the Department of Education announced plans to cut about half of its workforce as part of a broader government reorganization effort. The move came weeks after the President issued an executive order directing agencies to prepare “large-scale reductions in force” to maximize efficiency and productivity across the federal government.
The Office for Civil Rights bore a particularly heavy burden. Education officials issued layoff notices to 299 of OCR’s approximately 575 employees. The department also announced it would close seven of OCR’s 12 regional offices scattered across the country, consolidating operations into just five locations.
Those employees were immediately placed on paid administrative leave starting March 21, 2025, with strict orders prohibiting them from performing any work. The department initially planned to officially terminate these workers in early June 2025.
By late 2025, GAO notes that, as of November 21, there were 446 OCR staff, 384 of whom had received RIF notices, and that if all RIFs had proceeded there would have been about 60 OCR staff left, down from about 575 in FY 2024.
The planned June separations never happened. Two federal court orders temporarily blocked the Education Department from following through on the layoffs, creating a protracted legal battle that stretched for months.
On May 22, 2025, a district court issued a preliminary injunction stopping the entire RIF across the Department of Education. Less than a month later, on June 18, the same court issued another preliminary injunction specifically protecting OCR staff from termination. While the Supreme Court later stayed the broader May injunction on July 14, the June order protecting civil rights employees remained in effect.
In response to the June court order, the department announced plans to reinstate approximately 260 of the 299 affected OCR employees. It began bringing back 85 workers in September 2025, with plans to reinstate the rest on a rolling basis through early November.
GAO reported that Education officials claimed during this time, OCR has ‘kept up with its workload and met its mission without these staff,’ and that the department decided to recall employees to help with enforcement of existing civil rights complaints.
But the reprieve was short-lived. On September 29, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit stayed the June preliminary injunction, once again allowing the department to move forward with separating OCR staff while litigation continued.
The situation became even more complicated in October 2025 when the federal government shut down. During the shutdown, Education issued an additional 137 RIF notices to OCR employees. The department then paused all RIF actions as of November 21, 2025, while awaiting further court guidance. Making matters more complex, Congress passed a continuing resolution in fiscal year 2026 that specifically rescinded any layoffs initiated by executive agencies between October 1 and November 12, 2025.
In December 2025, Education announced it would temporarily recall the 247 OCR staff who remained on administrative leave. According to the GAO report, the department expected these employees to return to work on December 15, though only 85 had actually been recalled to active duty as of December 16.
Finally, in early January 2026, nearly ten months after the initial layoff notices, the Department of Education rescinded all RIF actions for OCR staff and reinstated employees to their original positions.
All this time, telling the American public that the Trump administration was making the government more efficient, taxpayers continued footing the bill for employees who were explicitly barred from doing their jobs.
According to court filings submitted by the Department of Education, keeping OCR employees on paid administrative leave cost the federal government “nearly $1 million per week.” The GAO used this figure to calculate total costs over the months of legal uncertainty.
From March 21 through September 5, 2025—the initial phase when all 299 affected employees remained on leave—the salaries and benefits cost between $18 million and $24 million. After some employees returned to work in September, the remaining workers on administrative leave cost an additional $10.5 million to $14 million through December 12, 2025.
The GAO’s conservative estimate puts the total cost between $28.5 million and $38 million just for salaries and benefits. This figure doesn’t include other potential expenses like severance pay, unemployment insurance, administrative processing costs, or the expense of handling employee appeals and grievances.
Had the department successfully terminated employees as originally planned in June 2025, the cost would have been significantly lower, approximately $8.25 million to $11 million, according to GAO calculations.
Perhaps most troubling to government auditors: the Department of Education cannot demonstrate that it properly analyzed whether the layoffs would actually save money or improve efficiency.
When the President issued his February 2025 executive order calling for workforce reductions, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) issued detailed guidance to federal agencies. That guidance explicitly required agencies to document potential costs and savings associated with proposed workforce reductions for fiscal years 2025 through 2027 before implementing layoffs.
Education officials told the GAO that the department did conduct cost-benefit analyses but provided information to OMB only orally. Critically, the department produced no written documentation of these analyses, despite the clear requirement to do so. Officials attributed the lack of documentation to the “evolving and deliberative” nature of ongoing litigation and changing circumstances.
The GAO found that Education “could not demonstrate that it included all potential costs and savings” in its analysis. Without proper documentation, there’s no way to verify whether the department considered all relevant factors or whether its calculations were accurate.
The watchdog agency issued a formal recommendation that the Secretary of Education estimate the full costs and savings associated with the March 2025 RIF actions and properly document the analysis. The Education Department declined to concur with the recommendation, arguing that the matter was now moot since the RIFs had been rescinded.
However, the GAO pointed out that Education officials stated as recently as December 2025 that the department “remained committed to the RIF and would work to officially separate these staff in the future.” If the department attempts similar workforce reductions again, having documented cost-benefit analyses would be essential for informed decision-making.
While employees sat idle on paid leave, the Office for Civil Rights continued receiving thousands of discrimination complaints from students, parents, and advocacy groups across the country.
Between March 11 and September 23, 2025, OCR received 9,269 complaints alleging discrimination in schools and colleges. During that same period, the office opened just 635 investigations—meaning it investigated only about 7 percent of incoming complaints.
The office resolved 7,072 complaints during this timeframe, but approximately 90 percent of these resolutions came through dismissals rather than investigations. Specifically, OCR dismissed 6,353 complaints and resolved just 719 through findings of insufficient evidence, voluntary agreements, settlements, or technical assistance.
OCR can dismiss complaints for various legitimate reasons under its Case Processing Manual, including situations where the complaint doesn’t involve laws OCR enforces, where the matter has been transferred to another agency, where the complaint has been resolved or withdrawn, or where OCR’s investigation ability is substantially impaired.
The 90 percent dismissal rate during this period is notably high compared to historical patterns. In a 2021 GAO report on school bullying, auditors found that OCR dismissal rates had varied from 49 percent of resolved complaints in the 2010-11 school year to 81 percent in 2019-20.
According to GAO analysis of court filings, OCR’s caseload increased by an average of about 98 cases per week between late June and late September 2025, raising questions about the office’s capacity to handle its growing workload with diminished staff.
