On Friday, October 10, the Trump administration fired almost all employees at the US Department of Education’s (ED’s) Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS). A federal judge later temporarily blocked the firings, ruling that the administration couldn’t conduct mass layoffs during a government shutdown. These potential staffing cuts represent a clear threat to disabled students' civil rights.

Required under federal law, OSERS ensures states provide a “free and appropriate public education” to the more than 7.5 million prekindergarten–grade 12 students with disabilities in the US. As part of this work, the office distributes billions of federal dollars to help states provide special education services from early childhood through postsecondary education. OSERS also funds and provides support services for young children with disabilities, including children who were born prematurely or exposed to toxic substances in utero.

Without the office’s oversight, former staff, state leaders, and advocates worry states could fall out of compliance with federal disability rights laws and deny disabled students the services they’re entitled to.

This threat to OSERS comes as disabled children and their families face not only cuts to other critical programs they rely on, such as Medicaid, but also increased scrutiny and threats to their data privacy. It’s also part of a larger wave of cuts to staff at other agencies that help administer early childhood programs that serve children with disabilities, such as the Office of Head Start and Office of Child Care.

To protect disabled children’s right to public education and special education services, state and local lawmakers can work with nonprofit service providers to ensure local school districts and family services departments have the capacity to address families’ needs and concerns. This requires not only funding at the state and local levels but also updating monitoring systems so districts can continue to track key data on disabled students.

Despite Federal Legal Protections, Disabled Students' Civil Rights Continue to Be Threatened

Disabled people have only recently won the right to learn, work, and live in their communities. Even still, they continue to face barriers to accessing the basic services and supports they need not just to thrive but also survive.

Before federal law recognized disability civil rights, disabled people were often excluded from society and considered unable to make decisions about their own lives. Disabled children were often denied access to public schools. Those who did attend school were segregated into separate facilities that rarely provided students with disabilities the same opportunities as their nondisabled peers.

Read the full article about disabled students' civil rights by Alexis Weaver, Susan J. Popkin, Dana Ferrante, and Elly Miles at Urban Institute.