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.

The President's 1-hour-47-minute State of the Union address largely bypassed education policy, offering no substantive education agenda for the coming year beyond brief references to parents' rights and gender identity. Congress, meanwhile, introduced a package of bills increasing oversight and accountability for child care block grants and held hearings on CTE and AI in schools.

Congress was on recess last week; the notable development was a letter from Senators Warren, Sanders, Murray, and Baldwin calling on GAO to open an investigation into the Department's use of interagency agreements to transfer grant programs to other federal agencies without congressional approval. The Senators expressed concern that the transfers delayed crucial funding, created administrative inefficiencies, increased costs, and compromised technical assistance quality for states and grantees.

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.

With appropriations largely settled, Congress resumed its focus on education, youth, and workforce issues, introducing proposals on K–12 school safety, foster youth housing and legal services, higher education affordability, and WIOA flexibility. Committee hearings examined literacy instruction, education-related civil rights issues, child care fraud, and foreign influence in nonprofits.

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.

On February 4, the President signed H.R. 7148 into law, funding the Department of Education at approximately $79 billion through FY2026—a Congressional rejection of the administration's proposed deep cuts, though the law does not include significant new guardrails against the Department's ongoing restructuring efforts. Congress has until February 10 to negotiate separate DHS funding as part of the same legislative package.

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.

The federal government was again partially shut down after the Senate stripped long-term DHS funding from the consolidated appropriations bill—which includes Education funding—opting for a two-week continuing resolution for DHS amid ongoing uproar over ICE enforcement, and sending the amended bill back to the House with a January 30 deadline looming. The Senate separately passed H.R. 7148, the consolidated appropriations bill, by 71–29 with significant amendments, ending that particular funding lapse.

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 House passed both the consolidated Education appropriations bill and the DHS funding bill last week, but Senate floor action was upended by mounting outrage over ICE enforcement in Minnesota and nationally—putting the entire funding package on a collision course with a January 30 lapse. The Senate was out of session for the week, leaving the education funding timeline directly dependent on resolution of the DHS funding dispute.

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.

The Senate Appropriations Committee released conferenced spending bills providing $18.4 billion for Title I, $15.2 billion for IDEA, and a maximum Pell award of $7,395—along with language directly limiting the Department's authority to transfer funds outside of ED and an explanatory statement calling the IAA strategy unprecedented and improper. The package signals meaningful Congressional disapproval of the administration's program transfer approach, even if enforcement mechanisms remain limited.

During the first session week of the new year, Congress introduced a range of education-related legislation while appropriators continued negotiating the remaining funding bills covering Labor, HHS, and Education—with the current CR set to expire and no deal yet in sight. The week also included a House Education and Workforce Committee markup on two bills related to pregnant students' rights.

Congress ended 2025 in a holding pattern, with appropriations unresolved, no legislative response to the Department's interagency agreements, and significant open questions about the year ahead—including what Congress will do, if anything, as the administration continues to restructure ED without statutory authority. Education stakeholders heading into 2026 face compounding uncertainty across funding, program administration, and federal oversight.

The House passed the Secure Rural Schools Reauthorization Act, the Senate passed the Ensuring VetSuccess on Campus Act, and the House Education and Workforce Committee advanced four higher education transparency bills—while the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee marked up eighteen bills addressing student and youth interactions with social media, data, and AI, signaling an intensified congressional push on digital safety governance. Separately, the Department convened negotiated rulemaking on Workforce Pell.

The House passed three bills targeting foreign influence—primarily from China and the Chinese Communist Party—in K–12 public schools, including measures requiring parental notice of foreign entity involvement, prohibiting school contracts with the Chinese government, and cutting federal funding for schools that receive Chinese government support. The week's activity came alongside the Department's rollout of a new HEA Section 117 foreign-gift disclosure portal, signaling accelerating federal scrutiny of foreign influence across both K–12 and higher education.

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.

With the shutdown resolved, Congress returned to a broad legislative agenda spanning K-12 nutrition, student mental health, loan transparency, civil rights protections, and online safety for minors—including substantive hearings on the future of college, CTE pathways, and services for foster youth. The Energy and Commerce Subcommittee simultaneously advanced a package of eighteen bills targeting student and youth interactions with social media, data, and artificial intelligence.