On April 30, Sligo Law Group, the Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, and Eimer Stahl LLP filed a motion for preliminary injunction in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois as the next step in an ongoing federal lawsuit on behalf of Afterschool for Children and Teens Now Illinois (ACT Now) and Metropolitan Family Services.

On Monday, April 20, 2026, the U.S. Department of Education issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) focused on “earnings accountability” that would expand federal oversight to nearly all Title IV-eligible programs and introduce new compliance obligations for institutions, and have immediate and material implications for institutional operations, program viability, and student disclosures. In short, the NPRM introduces a new earnings premium standard, impacts direct loan eligibility, includes an expansion of STATS reporting, contains a new administrative threshold capacity requirement, requires additional student disclosures, and contains limited opportunities for institutions to challenge the data the Department will use to make eligibility determinations.

On March 19, 2026, the Department of Education announced an interagency agreement with the U.S. Department of Treasury to transfer all student loan functions—and potentially all FSA functions—under a loosely defined three-phase approach in which Treasury, not ED, will identify the "future state" of non-default loan servicing and assess the "programmatic and policy requirements" governing student aid eligibility. Many of the responsibilities identified in the IAA are specifically and exclusively assigned to ED by statute, and the agreement does not identify the legal authority under which ED may transfer them—raising significant concerns for borrowers and institutions already navigating an uncertain federal student loan landscape.

Two new interagency agreements announced February 23, 2026—one delegating Section 117 foreign gift reporting and enforcement to the State Department, another transferring family engagement and school safety grant programs to HHS—bring ED's total to nine IAAs shifting 118 federal education programs out of the Department. Both agreements are internally contradictory, appear to exceed ED's statutory authority, and introduce new layers of administrative complexity for states, districts, and institutions that currently look to a single agency for program guidance, oversight, and funding.

Federal civil rights laws governing DEI in education have not changed—the Department's interpretation of those laws has, and institutions should approach compliance decisions accordingly. While certain enforcement tools, including the February 2025 Dear Colleague Letter and related certification requirements, are no longer operative following successful legal challenges, the underlying policy interpretations remain in effect and the Department continues to pursue enforcement through grant decisions, OCR investigations, and emerging mechanisms including proposed SAM certification revisions.

Sligo Law Group, Lawyers for Good Government, and the DC Law Collective filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of more than 140 career federal employees, alleging the Trump administration used reduction-in-force procedures to carry out politically motivated terminations while denying employees constitutional due process protections. The complaint details how agencies manipulated competitive area structures to target specific individuals, publicly stigmatized employees without providing an opportunity to respond, and funneled appeals into an MSPB process rendered effectively non-functional by an administrative backlog of over 18,750 pending cases.

The Office of Personnel Management released two proposed rules that would transfer adjudication of suitability determinations and all reduction-in-force appeals from the Merit Systems Protection Board to OPM itself—eliminating independent review of the agency's own employment actions. The RIF rule goes further by sharply limiting the grounds employees can raise, shifting the burden of proof onto the employee, eliminating judicial review, and giving the politically-appointed OPM Director unchecked authority to intervene in any appeal decision.

OPM's Final Rule on "Schedule Policy/Career" strips Civil Service Reform Act job protections from tens of thousands of career employees in positions the President deems "confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy advocating"—allowing termination without cause, notice, or appeal, and reassigning whistleblower retaliation investigations from the independent Office of Special Counsel to agencies themselves. The Rule is part of a multi-front effort to bring all executive branch employment decisions under political appointee control, and in response to over 40,000 public comments—94% opposed—the administration asserted that any congressional limits on the President's hiring and firing authority are unconstitutional.

The Department of Education released updated guidance on constitutionally protected prayer and religious expression in public schools, expanding the scope of LEA certification obligations beyond prayer-specific provisions and affirmatively protecting visible personal prayer by school employees. The 2026 guidance eliminates the prior structural distinction between prayer and religious expression more broadly—a shift with significant implications for how districts assess their compliance obligations under Section 8524 of the ESEA.

Sligo Law Group has welcomed two former U.S. Department of Education attorneys as Of Counsel: Denise Morelli, who brings more than 30 years of Title IV enforcement experience including hundreds of program review and audit actions before the Department's Office of Hearings and Appeals, and Marcus Hedrick, who brings more than 15 years advising on IDEA and disability law, most recently as Acting Deputy Assistant General Counsel for Educational Equity. Their addition significantly expands the firm's depth in higher education compliance and disability and civil rights law.

The bipartisan FY2026 appropriations package released January 20 would fund the Department of Education at $79 billion—largely maintaining existing program levels—while the accompanying Explanatory Statement expresses direct congressional concern about ED's use of interagency agreements to transfer statutory responsibilities to agencies without the experience, expertise, or relationships to carry them out. The bill's appropriations language, however, does not include significant new restraints beyond the existing Section 512 fund-transfer prohibition, leaving the administration's IAA strategy legally unresolved.

A new deep-dive collaboration between EducationCounsel and Sligo Law Group analyzes the legal authority underlying the Trump Administration's use of interagency agreements (IAAs) to transfer significant Department of Education programs and funds to other federal agencies. The analysis finds that the IAAs appear to conflict with appropriations statutes expressly prohibiting such transfers and likely exceed the statutory authorities cited to support wide-scale program transfers aimed at dismantling ED without congressional authorization.

On November 18, 2025, the Department of Education announced a sweeping plan to redistribute core statutory responsibilities—including grant competitions, technical assistance, and program oversight—to other federal agencies through interagency agreements, despite Congress having consolidated these functions under a single Cabinet department specifically to avoid the fragmentation that existed before 1979. The proposal raises substantial legal concerns, as many of the responsibilities ED intends to transfer are specifically assigned to the Department by statute and cannot be reassigned through executive action alone.

The federal government has filed appeals of two preliminary injunctions blocking enforcement of the July 2025 PRWORA reinterpretation—one in the First Circuit covering 20 plaintiff states and D.C., and one in the Ninth Circuit covering Head Start programs nationwide. Both injunctions remain in place while the appeals are pending, meaning current enforcement restrictions continue for affected states and Head Start grantees.

A final PSLF regulation published October 31, 2025 adds exclusions from "qualified employer" status for organizations the Secretary determines have a "substantial illegal purpose"—with a definition broad enough to encompass work related to immigration services, gender-affirming care, student protests, and DEI initiatives. The rule gives the Secretary discretionary authority to disqualify employers with narrow appeal rights and a 10-year bar on reapplication, immediately ceasing loan payment credits for employees of disqualified organizations, and is already subject to two separate legal challenges before it takes effect July 1, 2026.

The new Continuing Resolution has paused all federal agency RIFs government-wide and requires reinstatement, with back pay, for employees separated during the shutdown period. All RIF actions taken between October 1 and November 12, 2025 are invalid, and no agency may initiate or implement a RIF through January 30, 2026.

Former U.S. Department of Education attorneys Emily Merolli, Jill Siegelbaum, and Josie Eskow Skinner have launched Sligo Law Group, PLLC, a boutique federal education law firm designed to fill the expertise gap created by sweeping layoffs at the Department's Office of General Counsel. The firm advises K–12 agencies, higher education institutions, nonprofits, and advocacy organizations on federal education law, grants compliance, civil rights, and employment matters.

On July 4, 2025, the President signed H.R. 1—the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act"—into law, enacting sweeping changes across nearly every area of domestic federal policy, including K–12 and higher education. Sligo Law Group has prepared a breakdown of the Act's most consequential education provisions for organizations working to understand and navigate its impacts.

On July 10, 2025, the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services announced new legal interpretations that reverse over 20 years of guidance, classifying adult education, postsecondary CTE, and a broad array of HHS programs—including Head Start—as "federal public benefits" subject to PRWORA immigration-status eligibility and verification requirements. ED's interpretive rule explicitly states that Plyler v. Doe does not extend to adult or postsecondary education programs, with immediate operational implications for grantees under WIOA Title II and the Perkins Act.

In a 6–3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that a Maryland school district's refusal to allow religious families to opt their children out of LGBTQ+-inclusive curriculum materials substantially burdened their free exercise rights and triggered strict constitutional scrutiny—a meaningful departure from the longstanding Employment Division v. Smith framework. The decision raises the legal bar for school policies that incidentally burden religious beliefs, even neutral and generally applicable ones, and increases litigation exposure for districts and educational agencies that deny religious accommodation requests.