The push to shift enforcement to states carries significant risk: advocates warn it could produce a patchwork of uneven protections, with students in states that lack comparable agencies or political will facing no viable recourse while the federal government retreats from a role it has held for decades.

State legislators and civil rights advocates in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Massachusetts are moving to assume school discrimination enforcement duties that the Trump administration has largely abandoned, the Associated Press reported Thursday. Mass layoffs at the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights have left thousands of complaints unresolved, with families saying they have nowhere else to turn.

The federal office had more than 300 open investigations in Pennsylvania alone as of January 2025, according to the most recent federal data. Each is a potential candidate for transfer to state agencies that lack the staffing and enforcement authority of their federal counterpart.

“It would be tough, I’ll be totally honest,” said Desireé Chang, education director for the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission. “A stark influx would definitely put some weight on our agency. But we would do it because that is what we are charged with doing.”

Federal enforcement slows sharply after layoffs

The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights was already working through a heavy caseload before President Donald Trump took office. Sweeping layoffs have since closed entire offices in Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, and elsewhere. Remaining staff have shifted focus to quick-turnaround complaints, with time-consuming investigations becoming rare, the AP reported.

Trump officials have also redirected the office toward cases targeting schools that make accommodations for transgender students and athletes, arguing that such policies discriminate against girls and women.

Trump officials said the backlog of complaints was inherited from the Biden administration and brought back some fired employees to help clear cases.

State proposals emerge as federal gap widens

Pennsylvania Sen. Lindsey Williams, a Democrat, proposed a new state civil rights office last fall, modeled directly after the federal agency.

“If the federal government won’t stand up for our most vulnerable students, I will,” Williams said.

Her bill faces long odds in Pennsylvania’s Republican-controlled Senate. Williams said she has heard interest from lawmakers in other states; similar proposals have advanced in Maryland and Illinois.

More immediately, advocates in Pennsylvania are pressing for greater investment in the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, which already holds legal authority to investigate school discrimination but rarely uses it. Only 5% of the commission’s recent cases involve education; its roughly 100 staff — down from more than 200 in previous years — primarily handles employment disputes.

Kristina Moon, a lawyer at the Education Law Center in Pennsylvania, said she has begun directing families to file complaints with the commission rather than the federal government.

“It’s incredibly important for students and families to be aware of any other option available to them,” Moon said.

In Maryland, legislators proposed a bill that would give the state’s Commission on Civil Rights new authority to investigate school discrimination. At a legislative hearing, Glendora Hughes, the commission’s general counsel, said her office could no longer rely on Washington to act.

“Offices have been closed, people have been fired, cases are piling up or not even moving — that’s why we sought to step in that gap and provide Maryland students an option,” Hughes said.

Massachusetts officials pointed to an existing Problem Resolution System within the state education department that accepts complaints under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and other anti-discrimination laws. The state’s executive office of education said in a statement that it is “imperative that the Office for Civil Rights perform its congressionally mandated duties, rather than leaving states on their own to protect the rights of their students.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center is suing the St. Tammany Parish School District in Louisiana on behalf of a 10-year-old boy with autism whose classroom time was cut to two hours a day beginning in 2024, down from a full school day. The nonprofit said it is the kind of case the federal government would have handled in the past.

Enforcement powers vary widely among the emerging state proposals. Some would allow states to mediate disputes and issue legal orders. A newly created Office of Civil Rights in California, by contrast, focuses primarily on providing anti-discrimination guidance and training to local schools, rather than compulsory enforcement.

Pennridge families still waiting

The emerging state-level response is driven in part by families like those in the Pennridge School District in southeastern Pennsylvania. Parents filed a 2024 complaint with the Education Department describing Black students routinely hearing racial slurs — including terms like “slave” and “monkey” — from white classmates, often without school discipline.

Adrienne King, president of the NAACP Bucks County chapter and parent of two daughters in the district, said the complaint produced nothing. The bullying has not stopped.

“There was an expectation that something was going to happen,” King said. “It’s a very hollow, empty feeling.”

King said her daughters still hear racial slurs and face insensitive comments about their hair. She wonders about the long-term effect on them.

“I feel as though my girls have normalized a lot of this, but for the sake of survival — middle school is hard,” she said. “You just want to be like everybody else.”

Advocates warn that without restored federal enforcement, the burden will fall unevenly on states, leaving students in Republican-led states with no comparable mechanism for redress.