Federal Legislation & News
in Special Education
ED Drops Legal Appeal of K-16 DEI Guidance
The Trump Administration has dropped its appeal of a federal court ruling that blocked the U.S. Department of Education’s (ED) anti–diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) campaign, leaving the lower court’s decision in effect. The dispute arose when ED issued a Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) in early 2025 that warned higher education institutions they could lose federal funding if they engaged in a broad range of practices labeled as DEI, including hosting events, choosing curriculum, considering race in admissions, hiring practices, issuing scholarships, or other activities. U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher struck down both actions, ruling that the Administration’s guidance/DCL violated the First Amendment and federal procedural rules by “suppressing lawful and beneficial speech.”
For students with disabilities, the Office for Civil Rights is often the last line of defense (OPINION)
K-12 Dive
The path to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education will have a generational impact — eliminating the safeguards that have ensured all students have access to equitable, inclusive schools since the department’s founding in 1979. Specifically, the recent threats to consolidate the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights within the U.S. Department of Justice are even more devastating for students at the intersection of race, poverty, and disability. This move severs the civil rights lifelines that protect students who are farthest from privilege and opportunity. OCR, an office within the Education Department, was established to enforce federal civil rights laws in schools. Notably, OCR provides students with access to individual discrimination investigations and upholds their civil rights in schools when wrongdoing has occurred, such as in instances where they are excluded due to a disability or when required accommodations are not provided. And OCR investigations don’t just demand justice for individual students — they can also direct systemic changes in school policy and practice to ensure further injustice doesn’t happen again to any other student in that community.
A missed opportunity in SEL: Centering students with disabilities
Education Week
Explicitly teaching students social-emotional skills, like social awareness and goal-setting, can lead to stronger relationships, academic gains, and a greater sense of well-being, research shows. Experts say that may be especially true for students with disabilities—but they’re not always considered when schools are designing or implementing SEL curricula. That’s a missed opportunity, given that most students with learning differences spend the majority of their time in general education classrooms. It’s also a critical disconnect because SEL instruction often targets skills that these learners might especially need help with, like self-regulation, remaining resilient in the face of mistakes, and advocating for themselves.
Note: Requires subscription after limited free articles.
Deal Reached Between House-Senate on Education Funding, COPAA CEO Responds
Early this morning, House and Senate appropriators announced that a final deal has been reached on education, health, and other domestic spending. The negotiated Fiscal Year 2026 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Services (Labor-H) bill includes [mostly] level funding for all K-12 education programs, including Title I and other titles of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), as well as all of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). While level funding means that no additional funding would flow to states and districts in the coming year for general or special education, the final deal is viewed overall as positive, given the steep cuts originally proposed to education by the House. The bill also avoids any block-granting of funds under ESEA or IDEA funds, as proposed by the White House, which COPAA and partners opposed. The bill also allocates specific funding for research as required by IDEA -at the Institute for Education Sciences- and explanatory language clarifies that Congress has not given authority to transfer any education funding to another Federal agency, and that no authorities exist for the Department of Education to transfer its fundamental responsibilities under authorized education laws. In response to the bill’s release, COPAA CEO Denise Marshall issued the following statement:
“COPAA is pleased that Congress has included key funding for programs authorized under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), and other education laws. We have advocated that these funds -and having the U.S. Department of Education (ED) continue to oversee and implement their use- are essential for early intervention, preschool, and K-12 education for all children with disabilities. We appreciate that Congress has clarified that ED must not transfer any education funding to another Federal agency unless such transfer authority is provided in an appropriations law, and that no authorities exist for ED to transfer its fundamental responsibilities under authorized federal education laws. It is clear that Congress has not approved abolishing the Department of Education and is vigilant in ensuring that interagency agreements are not used to accomplish the same goal.
Given grave concerns, COPAA has outlined this past year regarding proposals and Interagency Agreements to transfer education programs -including IDEA- to other federal agencies, that we do not think such arrangements are lawful or in the best interest of students with disabilities. Our children should not be used as test subjects under any circumstances. Congressional oversight is critical, and C OPAA will continue to advocate to protect the civil rights and educational opportunities of 9.5 million children with disabilities as well as push for Congressional hearings on any proposals that wreak havoc on our children, their families, and their schools.”
Learn more about COPAA’s work to protect children with disabilities.
Ed Department Pushing Ahead With Plan to Offload Special Education
Disability Scoop
With a pair of new hires and recent comments, advocates say the Trump administration appears to be actively laying the groundwork to transfer special education out of the U.S. Department of Education. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon told a group of disability advocates she met with last month that she’s committed to proceeding with plans to move special education oversight to another federal agency.
Now, however, there are signs that a move could be taking shape, advocates say. Earlier this week, the Administration for Community Living at HHS announced that it has hired Diana Díaz-Harrison, who had been serving as deputy assistant secretary of the Education Department’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, or OSERS, as well as Rebecca Hines, who had been an associate professor of special education at the University of Central Florida. Rebecca Hines’ sister, Cheryl Hines, is married to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “Those moves seemed to indicate that programs for students with disabilities will move to HHS,” said Denise Marshall, CEO of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, or COPAA, a nonprofit that advocates for the rights of students with disabilities and their families.
From Head Start to Civil Rights, 8 Ways Trump Reshaped Education in Just 1 Year
The 74
Before she became education secretary, Linda McMahon spent four years strategizing President Donald Trump’s return to the White House. His election was a triumph for conservatives and a chance to unwind decades of what they consider intrusions into state and local education matters. One year ago today, Trump took the oath of office for a second time and set it all in motion. Through executive orders, layoffs, and canceled contracts, he and McMahon carried out a frontal assault on a federal agency Congress created in 1979, the U.S. Department of Education. The nation has experienced “some of the most rapid and likely consequential changes in education policy” since the mid-1960s, when lawmakers passed the Civil Rights Act and the law creating Title I funding for children in poverty, said Jeffrey Henig, a professor emeritus at Teachers College, Columbia University. Under President George W. Bush, the No Child Left Behind Act further deepened Washington’s involvement in schools. But those initiatives used the strength of the federal government to expand educational opportunities for poor and minority students, Henig said, while this administration is turning away from a focus on equity.
Trump official, Project 2025 author: No cuts to special education
Chalkbeat
The future of special education remains up in the air, but the Trump administration is feeling pressure to assuage the concerns of parents of students with disabilities that efforts to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education could put their children at risk. That was one of the key takeaways from Chalkbeat’s conversation with Lindsey Burke, a Department of Education official and author of the education chapter of the conservative blueprint Project 2025. Burke, though, said that some of Project 2025’s most controversial ideas, including deep budget cuts to schools, aren’t currently on the table. She also said there’s “no reason to anticipate” funding freezes similar to the temporary withholding of $7 billion that threw school districts into chaos last summer.
But the Education Department is just one “decision point” on federal spending, and the department remains committed to ending grants it deems wasteful or not aligned with their priorities, Burke said. In her confirmation hearing, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon indicated the department would not cut funding to schools, but is currently seeking cuts to a number of programs and has already cancelled $2 billion in funds, according to Burke.
In Trump’s First Year, at Least $12 Billion in School Funding Disruptions
Education Week
The constitutional principle known as “the power of the purse” has been a fixture of American history classrooms for generations. Federal law explicitly prohibits the executive branch from overriding Congress’s spending decisions. But with a cascade of unilateral federal funding changes in the last year, President Donald Trump has challenged those principles more directly and aggressively than any leader in the nation’s 250-year history—and the education field felt the effects early and often. Education Week has spent the last year building a running—and increasingly sprawling—tabulation of the individual grant cancellations and broader funding disruptions affecting education as they’ve happened. During the first year of Trump’s second term, Education Week found that the federal government bypassed Congress and disrupted more than $12 billion for K-12 education that lawmakers had already allocated, much of it before Trump took office.
Note: Limited free articles, then requires a subscription.
An Analysis of the Impact of Endrew F. in the Courts
Perry A. Zirkel, University Professor Emeritus of Education & Law at Lehigh University, has just released his latest law review article, You can read “The Impact of Endrew F. : An Updated Analysis of Resulting Judicial Rulings,” here, published in the January 15, 2026 issue of the Education Law Reporter.
Of 419 judicial decisions referencing key special education law terminology issued between March 22, 2019 and March 22, 2025, Zirkel identified 247 decisions that appeared to have applied Endrew F.’s holding for a substantive free appropriate public education (“FAPE”), and then analyzed “a representative sample of one-third of the decisions”—specifically, “eighty-two final relevant decisions.” Zirkel found that the impact of the 2017 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Endrew F. on judicial decisions regarding FAPE has been “not at all dramatic,” with the “outcomes continu[ing] to be heavily skewed in favor of school districts.”
With respect to special education litigation, Zirkel’s article is a reminder of the importance of the continued work of COPAA and its members in advancing the rights of students with disabilities and their families in the courts.
The Endrew F. Court was the first to require that students’ individualized education programs (“IEPs”) must be “appropriately ambitious,” highlighting that students’ IEP teams must focus their work on designing programs that enable students with disabilities to make appropriate progress. For the families of the approximately 7.5 million students in the U.S. who have IEPs, the Endrew F. standard continues to be the foundation on which to build requests for clear and accurate data to ensure that students are making appropriate, measurable, and visible progress. You can read the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2017 decision in Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District RE-1 here.
Advocates Tell Congress to Protect All Ed Programs In Pending Appropriations Bill
COPAA joined hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals to urge Congress to protect all education programs from being transferred to other federal agencies by expanding language included in the pending Senate Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies (Labor-H) Fiscal Year 2026 appropriations bill that already protects Title I and IDEA from any transfers. The letter to the Senate notes that recent actions to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education (ED) through announcements to transfer programs out of ED are both illegal and harmful, stating that other agencies have “no history or expertise in education…” Further, the letter details how the administration is “creating a fractured, chaotic, and inefficient system for implementing the laws Congress has passed” and notes the ways ED functions by federal statute including to provide steady, focused leadership, to help states and districts support student success…and to protect student civil rights.” Finally, advocates urge Senators to “enforce the statutory role Congress established to protect students…take steps to eliminate [the] illegal interagency agreements and ensure that decisions about federal educational responsibilities continue to be made lawfully, transparently, and in the best interest of America’s children.” Read more about COPAA’s efforts to protect IDEA and stop the dismantling of ED.
Second Circuit provides a win for students through age 22.
A New York class action lawsuit regarding the right of students with disabilities to receive special education services until their 22nd birthday can proceed thanks to a December 2025 ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The decision in J.M. v. New York City Department of Education is available here.
The Second Circuit vacated a decision by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, which had dismissed the class action lawsuit brought by parents of students with disabilities against the New York City Department of Education and the Board of Education of the City School District of The City of New York (“DOE”) for violating the IDEA with a policy that terminates students’ special education services before they turn 22.
Because the state of New York provides adult education programming to nondisabled students who are 21 and older, the IDEA requires the state to provide a free appropriate public education (“FAPE”) to students with disabilities until their 22nd birthday. On the DOE’s motion, the New York district court had dismissed the lawsuit, finding a lack of subject matter jurisdiction because the plaintiff families had not exhausted administrative remedies by first filing to request an administrative due process hearing(s).
In reversing the district court’s decision, the Second Circuit noted that “exhaustion is not an absolute requirement” and ruled that the plaintiffs’ claims met the policy-or-practice exception to the IDEA’s exhaustion requirement: “Plaintiffs have pointed to a specific policy and practice they contend is contrary to law…. And the purposes of exhaustion would not be served” because their claims focused on a question of law “untethered from the individual circumstances of any individual student,” and the legal questions “do not require the ‘exercise of discretion and educational expertise by state and local agencies.’” The court also noted that the IDEA’s exhaustion of administrative remedies requirement “is a claim-processing rule and not a limit on the court’s jurisdiction.” The Second Circuit vacated and remanded for further proceedings.
Act Now! Tell Congress to End the Use of Seclusion & Restraint and Target Resources to Train School Teams
In December, the bipartisan Keeping All Students Safe Act (H.R. 6617/S. 3448) (KASSA) was introduced by Rep. Beyer (D-VA), Rep. Hamadeh (R-AZ), Ranking Member Scott (D-VA), Sen. Murphy (D-CT), Sen. Murray (D-WA), and Sen. Sanders (I-VT). COPAA endorsed the bill because it would prohibit schools from secluding any child or using any dangerous restraints that restrict breathing or can cause harm. KASSA would only allow restraint when needed to protect students and staff from serious physical injury. Importantly, the bill would provide funds to train school personnel so they can address behaviors with proactive evidence-based strategies. ACT NOW! Email your Senators and Representative and urge them to cosponsor the Keeping all Students Safe Act today! Learn more about KASSA and why we must ensure students with disabilities have every opportunity to pursue their education free from the fear of trauma and abuse.
50 Years of IDEA: 4 Things to Know About the Landmark Special Education Law
Education Week
Fifty years ago, Congress dramatically expanded schools’ responsibilities when it passed the nation’s primary special education law, requiring children with disabilities to receive a “free appropriate public education” alongside their non-disabled peers. The Education for All Handicapped Children Act, as it was then called, required schools to identify students with disabilities and make individualized plans to meet their needs. Disability rights advocates celebrated the law. But even as President Gerald Ford signed it on Dec. 2, 1975, he expressed concerns that Congress would not be able to provide adequate funding to meet its detailed mandates.
Note: Limited free articles, then requires a subscription.
The inside view of McMahon’s plans for special education
POLITICO
Disability advocates alarmed by the Trump administration’s plans for special education say a recent meeting with Education Secretary Linda McMahon did not alleviate what one participant described as “grave concern.” McMahon and Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey huddled with advocates for students with disabilities last week to discuss the future of the agency’s Office of Special Education Programs, Rehabilitation Services Administration, and the Office for Civil Rights. The upshot: The administration still plans to transfer federal responsibilities for special education services to a government agency outside the Education Department, according to the advocates. But not this week, despite rumors that the agency would launch new agreements to transfer more of its programs to other agencies on Christmas Eve. The timing of any decision — and the final destination for programs that support students with disabilities and investigate their civil rights discrimination complaints — is still being determined, advocates said they were told by agency officials.
The department oversees roughly $15 billion in annual spending on programs that support students with disabilities. The prospect of transferring federal programs has raised alarm among advocates who say such a move could undermine the government’s responsibility to guarantee children with disabilities get the education they are legally entitled to receive. “She and the others in the room kept reiterating that they fully supported IDEA, that they fully support students with disabilities, and they don’t intend to cut anything from them,” Denise Marshall, CEO of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, said of McMahon’s message during the meeting. “We, quite frankly, said, ‘While we appreciate those words, your actions don’t match them.’ “That’s what we have grave concern about,” Marshall said. “Because when significant change like this is happening, and the actions don’t match the rhetoric, or the words, or the information, that’s what leads to fear and confusion and chaos. And that’s what we think is happening right now.”
Note: Requires a free account to access the article.
‘A shifting system’: concerns over students’ civil rights rise as DoJ changes priorities
The Guardian
Within the justice department’s civil rights division is a small office devoted to educational issues, including seclusion, as well as desegregation and racial harassment. The division intentionally chooses cases with potential for high impact and actively monitors places it has investigated to ensure they are following through with changes. When the educational opportunities section acts, educators and policymakers take notice. Now, however, the Trump administration is wielding the power of the Justice Department in new and, some say, extreme ways. Hundreds of career staffers, including most of those who worked on education cases, have resigned. The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights also has been decimated, largely through layoffs. The two offices traditionally have worked closely together to enforce civil rights protections for students. The result is a potentially lasting shift in how the nation’s top law enforcement agency handles issues that affect public school students, including millions who have disabilities.