Sexual Violence and Campus Policy

The Associated Press reports that after President Donald Trump’s administration slashed staff in the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) last year, federal sexual‑violence investigations at schools and universities have dropped from dozens per year to fewer than 10 nationwide, while the office faces a backlog of more than 25,000 discrimination complaints. OCR now has roughly half as many lawyers to investigate alleged violations based on race, sex and disability, leaving many survivors who filed Title IX sexual‑assault complaints with no contact from the agency since 2024 and forcing them toward private lawsuits or abandonment of their cases. At the same time, Trump officials have opened nearly 50 Title IX investigations targeting schools that make accommodations for transgender students and athletes, and an Education Department spokesperson defends the shift as restoring “commonsense safeguards” by rolling back Biden‑era LGBTQ+ protections. Title IX practitioners tell AP that, given the staffing collapse and the new enforcement priorities, they have largely stopped filing sexual‑violence complaints with OCR, describing it as a “void” where schools effectively face no federal accountability for mishandling assault cases. The story underscores how a little‑noticed civil‑rights office, once a key venue for student victims and accused students alike, is being hollowed out and repurposed in ways that could reshape campus responses to sexual misconduct and gender identity nationwide.