STATES STAND UP FOR CIVIL RIGHTS

Trump's dismantling of Education Department prompts families enduring discrimination to scramble to find support

- BY COLLIN BINKLEY

In their mostly white school district, Black students routinely heard racial slurs. White classmates hurled insults like "slave," "monkey" or worse. It often went unpunished.

Parents made those claims in a 2024 complaint asking the U.S. Education Department to investigate racial bullying at the Pennridge School District in Pennsylvania. They thought their complaint had the power to make things better. Instead, it became one of thousands sitting in a federal office with little hope of gaining attention after layoffs by the Trump administration.

Families say they've had nowhere else to turn.

"There was an expectation that something was going to happen," said Adrienne King, who has two daughters in the district and is president of the NAACP Bucks County chapter. When nothing did, "it's a very hollow, empty feeling."

One of the Education Department's biggest jobs is to police discrimination in America's schools. But amid mass firings and shifting priorities, that role has waned. In its place, there's an emerging push for states to step up.

In Pennsylvania, a lawmaker is proposing a new state agency that would investigate schools and uphold students' civil rights — traditionally the role of the federal government.

At the same time, advocates there and in other Democrat-led states are pressing existing state agencies to intervene when students face discrimination based on race, disability or sex.

The idea carries risk. Pushing the work to states could create a patchwork of systems with uneven protections. Some worry it will embolden the Trump administration to retreat further on civil rights.

Lawmakers propose muscular state agencies

Pennsylvania Sen. Lindsey Williams offered a blunt message last fall when she proposed a new state civil rights office to be modeled after its federal counterpart.