The analysis, covering January 2025 through early 2026, examined four federal agencies tasked with stopping discrimination and concluded that staff departures, suspended investigations, and top-down directives have collectively weakened the government’s capacity to protect civil rights across the country.
Scope of the Human Rights Watch Report
Researchers at Human Rights Watch interviewed current and former federal workers, attorneys, complainants, and community organizations involved in discrimination cases. They also reviewed court filings and internal agency directives issued during the opening months of Trump’s second term.
The report focused on four bodies: the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice, the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Education, the Office of Fair Housing at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Trey Walk, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement that while the administration claims to protect all Americans, it is “rolling back systems that communities have long turned to for relief.”
DOJ Civil Rights Division Loses 274 Lawyers
The Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department employed approximately 365 lawyers when Trump took office in January 2025. By the end of that year, three-quarters of those attorneys had departed — an exodus the report attributes to what it called a “coordinated effort to undermine career staff.”
A Justice Department spokesperson told Al Jazeera that the division “remains dedicated to protecting the rights of all Americans” and said the agency had added 100 personnel since the 2025 departures. The spokesperson said current priorities include protecting religious liberty, Second Amendment rights, and women’s and girls’ spaces, as well as opposing race-based policymaking and DEI initiatives.
In May 2025, the Justice Department also announced it would halt investigations and reform agreements involving police departments accused of racial discrimination. Such agreements had previously been reached in cities including Louisville, Kentucky, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, following public outcry over police killings of unarmed Black people, including George Floyd.
Education and Housing Offices See Sharp Reductions
The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights began 2025 with 568 workers across 12 offices. Within months, seven of those offices were shuttered and half of the civil rights staff had left, according to the report.
Between May and September 2025, the office dismissed approximately 90 percent of the nearly 10,000 complaints it received — a dismissal rate the report described as significantly higher than in prior periods. Cases that resulted in required policy changes or monitoring dropped from 336 in the first half of 2024 to 59 over a comparable period in 2025.
The Office of Fair Housing at HUD saw its staff decline from 31 to 11 by mid-2025. The report found that 115 complaints the office had prepared and referred to the Justice Department for possible legal action were quashed.
One community housing group told Human Rights Watch that HUD no longer responds in a timely manner to reported instances of anti-LGBTQ discrimination.
Shift in Enforcement Priorities Under Trump
Trump’s second term has been marked by a broad rollback of policies associated with the diversity, equity, and inclusion movement. Trump has called DEI “racially discriminatory” and argued during his campaign that there was a “definite anti-white feeling in this country.”
Federal agencies including the EEOC and the DOJ Civil Rights Division suspended certain cases they had been pursuing, including some involving sexual harassment and transgender rights. New investigations were opened in their place, including a probe of Nike over allegations of discrimination against white employees.
The administration has also called for changes in how slavery and civil rights are depicted at national historic sites and parks, raising concerns among historians and advocacy groups about potential whitewashing of the historical record.
Historical Context of Federal Civil Rights Enforcement
The federal government’s role in civil rights enforcement traces back to the Constitution and its Bill of Rights, ratified in 1791. Following the Civil War, additional amendments established equal protection under the law, and Congress created the Department of Justice in 1870 partly to prosecute violent white supremacist groups when local authorities refused to act.
The Civil Rights Act of 1957 established a dedicated civil rights division within the Justice Department, part of a broader expansion of federal infrastructure during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Critics note, however, that the Constitution contains no explicit language conferring equal protection based on sex or gender.
What Happens Next
The Human Rights Watch report is likely to fuel legal challenges and congressional oversight requests aimed at the affected agencies. Civil rights organizations are expected to press federal courts to compel enforcement of existing anti-discrimination laws, potentially setting up clashes between the judiciary and the executive branch over the scope of agency obligations.
The Justice Department’s claim that it has added 100 personnel to the Civil Rights Division suggests the administration intends to reorient rather than abandon enforcement, focusing on religious liberty, Second Amendment rights, and opposition to race-conscious policies. How courts interpret the statutory mandates of agencies like the EEOC and HUD’s Office of Fair Housing — and whether they require those agencies to process complaints regardless of political priorities — will shape the next phase of this conflict.
Advocacy groups are also watching whether the dismissal of roughly 9,000 education complaints triggers litigation under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in federally funded programs. With staffing levels at historic lows across multiple agencies, the burden of civil rights enforcement may increasingly shift from federal regulators to private plaintiffs and state attorneys general.
— Sofia Alvarez, government desk, AXO News