Listen to our podcast, On NOTUS: Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez talks about her unlikely path to Congress.

Education

Education Department Recalls Hundreds of Civil Rights Employees It Placed on Leave

The administration acknowledged it needed help working through the civil rights caseload that has piled up in the workers’ absence.

Department of Education

Samuel Corum/Sipa USA via AP

By Adora Brown

December 8, 2025 06:44 PM

The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is in the process of recalling hundreds of employees it placed on paid administrative leave, acknowledging it could not keep up with civil rights complaints without them.

The move was first reported by USA Today, and confirmed by NOTUS. Employees were asked in an email on Friday to return to work, and have been instructed to return in person to their regional offices on Dec. 15 or Dec. 29.

“The Department will continue to appeal the persistent and unceasing litigation disputes concerning the Reductions in Force, but in the meantime, it will utilize all employees currently being compensated by American taxpayers,” Julie Hartman, a spokesperson for the Department of Education, told NOTUS in a statement.

The email in which employees were notified to return, obtained by NOTUS, outlined that employees of the OCR “need to meet their employee performance expectations and contribute to the enforcement of existing civil rights complaints.”

The employees are the subject of an ongoing lawsuit requesting that they be reinstated.

In a court declaration for another lawsuit revolving around the decision to place OCR employees on leave, a top official in the Office for Civil Rights said that the Department of Education received 7,888 civil rights complaints between March 11 and Sept. 1. March 11 is the date when 264 OCR employees were placed on administrative leave as a part of the Office of Management and Budget’s initial efforts to downsize the agency.

NOTUS reported in March that the office had no method to handle the transfer of civil rights cases after employees were put on leave. At the time, the agency did not answer questions about what the reduction in force would mean for the OCR’s caseload.

The president of AFGE Local 252, Rachel Gittleman, whose organization represents approximately 2,700 Department of Education employees, wrote in a statement that the department has “already wasted more than $40 million in taxpayer funds” by keeping OCR employees on paid leave since March.

“By blocking OCR staff from doing their jobs, Department leadership allowed a massive backlog of civil rights complaints to grow, and now expects these same employees to clean up a crisis entirely of the Department’s own making,” Gittleman said.