Trump administration renegotiates months-old civil rights agreements

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By Benjamin Wermund

The Education Department is rewriting dozens of agreements with school districts that investigators had already found were potentially violating federal anti-discrimination laws because the districts had websites that were inaccessible to students with disabilities.

It's the latest example of the Trump administration's new approach to civil rights enforcement, and department officials say it's another way the administration is seeking to boost efficiency in the Office for Civil Rights.

While the Education Department has long had the option to renegotiate existing agreements, officials have rarely done so — and civil rights advocates say they've never seen it done on such a scale. They question whether redoing so many old agreements will really boost efficiency.

The revised agreements come as the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights has tossed out hundreds of complaints filed by so-called mass filers, including Marcie Lipsitt, a Michigan-based disability rights advocate. Lipsitt has sent the government thousands of complaints against schools, districts and colleges with websites that she believes are not accessible to people who have impaired vision or hearing.

The dismissals were spurred by changes to the rulebook for civil rights investigations, which Trump administration officials say is an effort to cut back on what it calls mass filers — people like Lipsitt who file the same type of complaint against many schools.

Administration officials say the renegotiated contracts are also aimed at more "efficiently" resolving civil rights complaints.

Lipsitt said that dozens of the agreements the civil rights office previously reached with schools and districts have been renegotiated in recent weeks, including some that were originally reached nearly two years ago.

She said the new agreements, which are much shorter, are all identical. She called them "worthless," because they make a slew of changes, including removing mentions of accessibility audits and training for staff, among other things.

"How can the OCR retroactively offer these modified resolution agreements to institutions that entered willingly into ... agreements 23 months ago?" Lipsitt said.

Education Department spokeswoman Liz Hill acknowledged the agency is revamping some agreements after schools or districts asked for them to be reconsidered "in light of OCR dismissals of mass-filed complaints."

Civil rights officials are considering those requests from districts on a case-by-case basis, Hill said, and weighing whether renegotiating the agreements would allow the cases to be "monitored and resolved more efficiently than what was in the original resolution agreement."

"It is critical to note that even the modified agreements still obligate schools to ensure that their digital and website content is made accessible," she said.

Seth Galanter, senior director at the National Center for Youth Law, said it's legal for officials to change an existing agreement, "but only in response to a change in facts, law, or agency policy."

"It's not clear to me what change OCR is relying on to weaken these agreements requiring website accessibility," said Galanter, who worked in the Obama administration Office of Civil Rights. "OCR shouldn't be limiting justice depending on who brings a civil rights violation to their attention. The identity of the complainant doesn't alter the fact that all these school districts had inaccessible websites and that they agreed to fix them only when OCR received a complaint. OCR shouldn't back off ensuring full compliance with all the civil rights laws."

Catherine Lhamon, who led the civil rights office under the Obama administration, said renegotiating so many settled cases seems to fly in the face of the Trump administration's efforts to cut down on what officials have said is burdensome work created by mass filers.

"They say the basis is to save time and resources," Lhamon said. "To then add to the work burden to renegotiate agreements ... does not make sense. It really is burdensome to renegotiate these agreements."

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

So now websites have to be in braille, and have Garrett Morris with a megaphone?