A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) finds that the Trump administration’s actions at the Department of Education led to up to $38 million in wasted taxpayer funds and a significant reduction in civil rights enforcement for students. The report, commissioned by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), was released today.
The GAO examined how attempts to dismiss nearly 500 employees from the department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) affected both costs and service. The OCR is responsible for enforcing federal nondiscrimination laws in schools and colleges. According to the findings, after an attempt to lay off almost half of OCR staff in March 2025, those employees were placed on paid administrative leave for nine months, which cost taxpayers as much as $38 million while investigators could not perform their duties.
During this time, more than 9,000 discrimination complaints were filed with OCR across the country. About 90% of these cases were dismissed without review.
Senator Sanders commented: “Every child in America should be able to get a good education no matter where they live, what their religious beliefs are or whether or not they have a disability. Instead, the Trump administration fired half of the Education Department employees working to protect the civil rights of students and wasted as much as $38 million in taxpayer dollars by preventing investigators from doing their jobs. That is unacceptable.”
The report details further actions during Trump’s term, including another proposed round of layoffs during the 2025 government shutdown that would have reduced OCR’s capacity to just 10% of its previous level. Although staff were reinstated later that year following lawsuits against these measures, some impacts remain; there are now fewer investigators serving students compared with 2024.
This latest GAO study builds on earlier oversight work by Senator Sanders regarding civil rights protections under the Trump administration. Last month he released findings about possible First Amendment violations related to college campuses and previously reported that over 46 million students across 27 states and territories risked losing access to dedicated civil rights investigators due to cuts at OCR.
The full GAO report can be accessed online.
