Commission on Civil Rights to Investigate Federal Civil Rights Enforcement

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights recently launched a "comprehensive two-year assessment of federal civil rights enforcement" that will examine "the degree to which current budgets and staffing levels allow civil rights offices to perform their statutory and regulatory functions, the management practices in place in the offices and whether these practices are sufficient to meet the volume of civil rights issues within the offices’ jurisdiction, and the efficacy of recent resolution efforts from the offices."

The Commission expressly identified specific concerns across seven different agencies as motivating factors for this investigation.  Among them was the Department of Education, which was called out because:

The proposed budget calls for reducing staffing by 7 percent (losing 46 full time equivalent positions) at the department’s Office for Civil Rights, which investigates sex, race, disability, and age based civil rights complaints.4 The proposed budget itself reflects that the cutbacks would result in an untenable caseload of 42 cases per staff member. These proposed cuts are particularly troubling in light of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ repeated refusal in Congressional testimony and other public statements to commit that the Department would enforce federal civil rights laws.

The Commission on Civil Rights is an independent agency, meaning that its eight Commissioners are appointed to serve six-year terms and (unlike the heads of agencies that report to cabinet members) cannot be fired by the president over political disagreements. It is also a bipartisan commission, set up to ensure that is not dominated by members of one political party and includes a mix of members appointed by both the President and congressional leadership. The Commission is currently chaired by Catherine Lhamon, who formerly served as the Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights and was appointed by President Obama in the last month of his term. The Commission does not have enforcement authority, but rather, serves an advisory function by issuing reports about civil rights enforcement to the President and Congress. Therefore, its present investigation cannot directly change the civil rights practices in the Department of Education or other federal agencies. However, by exposing shortfalls in civil rights enforcement, the investigation could generate political pressure on the President and Congress to make changes, as well as provide information for voters to consider when the current President and members of Congress run for reelection.