A group of students and parents, represented by the National Center for Youth Law (NCYL), the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), and the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, Inc. (COPAA), filed a motion for preliminary injunction on Friday, May 2, 2025, in the lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education seeking to block the Department’s unlawful rollback of civil rights protections for students experiencing discrimination in schools.  

The motion asks the court to immediately halt the Department’s recent policy decision to abandon thousands of investigations within its Office for Civil Rights (OCR). It follows the filing of the plaintiffs’ amended lawsuit on April 10 and is supported by several sworn declarations from parents and current and former OCR staff that detail the perilous, ongoing harm many plaintiff children and thousands of students across the country continue to face as a result of the discrimination they experience in schools.