Suburban Congressman Sean Casten recently sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights demanding data on complaints filed by students and the resolutions to those cases.
The office's website shows zero sexual harassment or violence case resolutions since Trump took office. It also appears the administration has reached the fewest total resolution agreements in more than a decade.
The Democratic House member spoke with WNIJ education reporter Peter Medlin about the situation.
Rep. Sean Casten (SC): The most charitable interpretation here is that the Office for Civil Rights is doing its job but failing to report in the ways that it's supposed to report. So let's force them to do it. The worst outcome is that they're actually not doing the investigations anymore, and that's a really big deal.
WNIJ's Peter Medlin (PM): I mean, just in the last year, the Trump administration fired much of the Office for Civil Rights' staff. They also shut down the regional office in Chicago that investigated these complaints in the Midwest. So, again, trying to figure out if, because of those layoffs, we are talking about a lack of enforcement or a lack of reporting. It sounds like the letter that you and Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick sent is to get to the heart of that question. As much as I don't know, members of Congress also have no idea.
(SC): You want to give people the benefit of the doubt, but you also don't want to be a sucker. There's been some reporting of investigations, but there's been zero reported actual resolution of any cases involving minorities or women. Since January 2025, there's been no reporting at all on their website of any investigations.
So your listeners understand, this is well down the list of causality. About a quarter of women report that they have been sexually assaulted in educational institutions. Those institutions are required under Title IX to provide protections. If those protections work, you would never get to the Office for Civil Rights. You get to the OCR because someone files a complaint that an educational institution did not meet its obligations under Title IX. So if we're not seeing anything at that level, you have to multiply by orders of magnitude how many potential victims are getting no protection.
(PM): It appears that there were zero sexual harassment or sexual violence resolutions, and that would be in the whole country since January 2025, correct?
(SC): Yeah, that's the last time I think that the last report was January 2025 and we've seen nothing since then.
(PM): We know there were zero total OCR case resolutions in Illinois in 2025. We mentioned the question of whether this is a lack of reporting or enforcement. The letter also mentions a mismatch between how many resolutions are reported publicly online and how many the Office for Civil Rights reported in court filings. Does that lead you to believe we may at least be talking about a lack of public reporting?
(SC): We wouldn't have written the letter if we had all the answers to this. There are three options: option one, they aren't doing the enforcement. Option two, they are failing to report that they're doing the enforcement. Option three, they aren't doing the enforcement and they have a reporting problem. We passed these laws. They're required to do this and, in all three of those cases, they're in violation of what the legislative branch has directed the executive branch to do.
(PM): You mentioned the data around women who experience sexual violence on college campuses and in educational settings. Just to give context about the differences between the number of cases resolved in this administration and what's been reported publicly in previous years, if there were zero sexual harassment or sexual violence resolutions last year, how many resolutions about are there in a typical year? Are we talking about a few, are we talking about dozens, or hundreds? How different is this?
(SC): Candidly, I should have that number off the top of my head, and I don't have that on the top of my head. (Editor's note: the office's website shows 60 sexual harassment or violence resolutions in 2024 and 26 in 2023).
What I can share is data from anonymous reporting showing that 15% of girls ages 14 to 18 report unwanted sexual contact in school settings. That rises to almost 25% in collegiate settings. Of those who report, a much smaller number actually go to try to get enforcement.
That's where this stuff gets to be such a big deal, and that's that's why I mentioned the ties to the Epstein files. For all that we don't yet know about the Epstein victims, we know as members of Congress there are many people who have come to us privately and said, "My name is not in the files because I do not feel safe reporting, but I want you to know what happened."
That's tragically the reality of sexual violence in America. A very small number of people are brave enough to come forward.
So the Office for Civil Rights, the U.S. government — we're supposed to be the last line of defense for the most vulnerable. When we're potentially not enforcing, or at least not reporting what we're doing so people can feel safe coming to us, it creates the appearance that crime is going down even as it creates an environment where crime is easier to get away with.
(PM): The Office for Civil Rights' goal is to resolve, I think, 80% of cases within 180 days. According to their website, there are 330 pending investigations in Illinois, all of those running beyond that 180 day goal. Especially with the office closure in Chicago and the layoffs that we've seen, do we have any idea what's going on with those cases or if they're still being investigated at all?
(SC): I don't know. I wish I did.
(PM): Have you or any of your colleagues been able to talk with anyone who has a pending case about what has happened since the administration started making these changes?
(SC): We've not had any direct outreach. To the extent we can, it would obviously be private, but no. We're trying to figure things out. If folks are listening, particularly if they're constituents and have information, please reach out to our office.
(PM): The letter urges the Office for Civil Rights to make a few changes. Can you lay out some of the major ones?
(SC): Do your reporting on time, I suppose, is the biggest one. We want to understand what basis they're using to decide how to do this. Can they tell us how many investigators they have on staff right now?
We know there was a need for this before. If there are fewer investigators, what's happened to the caseload? That would be really helpful to know.
What are the release dates? We still don't have all the release dates for the 2023-24 data. We need that information so we can understand trends. Where should we be prioritizing law enforcement resources? Which educational institutions are doing a really good job so we can identify best practices and share them with institutions that aren't?
These are all no-brainers. These are things that should be done. Historically, the civil servants who worked in these organizations cared deeply about this work. They didn't need congressional prodding, and now we find ourselves having to ask these pretty basic questions.
(PM): Have you heard anything from anyone from the Department of Education or the Office for Civil Rights since you guys sent that letter?
(SC): No, although these letters typically take a few weeks to receive a formal response, even in the most cooperative administrations. So I wouldn't have expected a response this quickly since we just sent it. But as we receive any follow-up, we'll let you know.
(Editor's note: this interview has been editing for clarity & brevity)
Copy Edited by Eryn Lent
