The Education Department paid up to $38 million to civil-rights staff it barred from working
Summary
In March 2025, Education put 299 of its 575 Office for Civil Rights employees on leave and told them not to work. GAO calculates it cost $28.5–38 million in salaries through mid-December — while the caseload behind them grew by about 98 complaints a week.
The price of not working
On March 21, 2025, Education placed 299 Office for Civil Rights () employees on paid administrative leave as part of a department-wide reduction-in-force. Their RIF notices barred them from working. Two preliminary injunctions and a Supreme Court stay later, most of them were still on leave — still paid — nine months on. Using Education's own court filings, GAO calculated what that idle payroll cost: $18–24 million for the first stretch, then another $10.5–14 million once litigation dragged the leave period into December.
View data as table
| Mar 21–Sep 5, 2025 | $18M–$24M | 23 weeks on leave |
|---|---|---|
| Sep 8–Dec 12, 2025 | $10.5M–$14M | 14 weeks on leave |
| Total, Mar 21–Dec 12, 2025 | $28.5M–$38M | GAO's combined estimate |
Combined, 's range runs $28.5 million to $38 million — money paid for zero investigative output, because the staff receiving it were not allowed to do their jobs. 's larger finding is sharper than the dollar figure alone: Education never produced a documented accounting of the RIF's costs and savings, despite OMB and OPM guidance requiring agencies to do exactly that before restructuring. Nobody at the department can currently show the move saved money at all.
A staff cut in half, twice
entered 2025 with 575 employees across 12 regional offices, per 's count of Education's fiscal year 2024 staffing. The March RIF hit 299 of them — a little over half — and closed seven of the twelve regional offices outright, folding their caseloads into the five that remained. Had every announced RIF gone through as planned (Education kept adding to the list through an October 2025 round, filed during that month's government shutdown), calculates would have been left with about 60 staff nationwide.
View data as table
| FY 2024 staff | 575 | baseline before the RIF |
|---|---|---|
| Placed on leave, Mar 21, 2025 | 299 | 52% of staff; 7 of 12 regional offices closed |
| Projected if RIF fully proceeded | 60 | per GAO, based on RIF notices as of Nov. 21, 2025 |
That full collapse never happened. Litigation stalled the firings, a continuing resolution rescinded shutdown-era RIFs, and Education rescinded the RIF entirely in early January 2026 — but the department has not disclosed how many of the 299 actually returned to their desks. For nearly a year, the agency that enforces discrimination law in American schools ran on an unknown fraction of its already-shrunk staff.
The backlog nobody chose
While the RIF worked its way through the courts, complaints kept arriving. Between March 11 and September 23, 2025 — the exact window examined — received 9,269 new complaints of discrimination but opened only 635 investigations. It resolved 7,072 complaints in the same span, and 6,353 of those, or about 90%, were closed by dismissal rather than investigation.
View data as table
| Complaints received | 9,269 | Mar 11–Sep 23, 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Investigations opened | 635 | 7% of complaints received |
| Complaints resolved | 7,072 | 76% of complaints received |
| — resolved by dismissal | 6,353 | 90% of resolutions |
| — resolved other ways | 719 | insufficient evidence, settlement, or technical assistance |
's own trend analysis found the caseload growing by about 98 cases a week between late June and late September 2025 — faster than a leave-depleted staff could plausibly investigate. A high dismissal rate is not unique to this period; 's earlier work on school-bullying complaints found dismissal rates ranging from 49% to 81% in prior years. What is new is the denominator: a caseload climbing against a workforce that was, for months, legally barred from touching it.
The takeaway
- The money didn't buy investigations — it bought idle time. $28.5–38 million in salaries went to staff who, by the terms of their own RIF notices, were not permitted to work.
- The office shrank on paper before it shrank in fact. 299 of 575 employees were sidelined and seven of twelve regional offices closed, but courts kept most of the terminations from finalizing — leaving 's true working capacity unclear even to Congress.
- The backlog is the receipt. Complaints grew by about 98 a week while investigations opened for only 7% of what came in, and 90% of resolutions were dismissals rather than findings.
Cost and staffing figures cover Education's Office for Civil Rights only, per 's analysis of court filings from March 2025 through early January 2026; two related reviews of Federal Student Aid and the Institute of Education Sciences, cut in the same RIF, were still pending as of this writing.
Sources
- U.S. Government Accountability Office, Department of Education: Full Costs and Savings Estimate Needed for Reduction-in-Force and Restructuring of the Office for Civil Rights (-26-108320, Jan. 29, 2026) — the source for every figure in this piece: the $28.5–38 million cost of paid administrative leave, the 299-of-575 staffing cut, the seven closed regional offices, the 60-staff projection, and the March–September 2025 complaint and investigation counts. gao.gov/products/gao-26-108320
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The Office for Civil Rights investigates discrimination complaints against schools and colleges that take federal money. In March 2025, the Department of Education tried to cut it in half. Courts blocked the firings for months, but the staff stayed on the payroll the whole time — paid, and, per their own RIF notices, forbidden to work. The Government Accountability Office put a number on what that cost, and it is not small.