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During her June confirmation hearing, Kimberly Richey, who now leads the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education, said she’d always advocate for the office to have “the resources and tools it needs to do its job.”

Those resources apparently include the than 250 OCR employees that Education Secretary Linda McMahon has been trying to fire since March.

Three weeks after Richey was sworn in, the department is telling laid-off staff to report by Dec. 15 to temporarily work through a backlog of civil rights complaints, according to an email sent out Friday.

In a Monday statement, Rachel Gittleman, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents department staff, said she’s “relieved these public servants are finally being allowed to return to work” and that keeping them sidelined has “wasted than $40 million in taxpayer funds.” She accused McMahon of playing politics. “Department leadership allowed a massive backlog of civil rights complaints to grow, and now expects these same employees to clean up a crisis entirely of the Department’s own making.”

OCR has roughly 25,000 complaints to work through. In federal court updates as part of a lawsuit over the cuts, officials said that they were dismissing the majority of the complaints filed since the March layoffs. An OCR database shows that staff have resolved 165 cases this year, but that’s well below previous years.

The call back to work is the latest twist in a legal saga that has been a rollercoaster both for OCR employees and families waiting for action on their complaints. In October, a federal appeals court allowed the department to move forward with the layoffs as the lawsuit challenging them continues. Now, with the possibility that they could still ultimately lose their jobs, the attorneys, investigators and other OCR staff members must get back to work.

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“The department will continue to appeal the persistent and unceasing litigation disputes concerning the reductions in force,” Julie Hartman, press secretary for legal affairs, said in a statement. “But in the meantime, it will utilize all employees currently being compensated by American taxpayers.”

‘Drastically reduced staffing’

The department’s admission that it needs help to carry out its legal obligations is at least the third time officials have recalled staff after eliminating them. In May, McMahon told a House appropriations subcommittee that she had rehired 74 people.

“You hope that you’re just cutting fat,” McMahon testified. “Sometimes you cut a little in the muscle.”

In Augustthe department brought back employees, placed on leave in late January. Many had attended a training on diversity, equity and inclusion during the first Trump administration, an activity that made them a target for the administration’s aggressive anti-DEI agenda. While the union filed for arbitration to challenge the firings, Madison Biederman, a spokeswoman for the department said the staffers were recalled because “the agency determined they are an asset to the workforce.”

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Last week’s development is further evidence that “the federal government cannot fulfill its civil rights mandate to students with such drastically reduced staffing,” said Amanda Walsh, deputy director of external affairs for the Victim Rights Law Center, a legal advocacy group that sued over the cuts to OCR. The organization represents victims of sexual assault. “We have not had any movement on our cases nor have we even heard where they’ve been assigned, demonstrating that the caseloads are too big for the reduced staff to manage.”

In March, the department shuttered seven of the 12 OCR regional offices, and during the government shutdown, tried to lay off another 137 OCR staffers. A federal court temporarily blocked the layoffs, and the agreement to reopen the government forced the secretary to bring the employees back to work, at least until the end of January.

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The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, opened doors that were once firmly shut for students with disabilities.

As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the IDEA, we reflect on how far we’ve come, and the work yet to do, to protect students with disabilities. pic.twitter.com/tqomZR6SGy

— U.S. Department of Education (@usedgov)

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, opened doors that were once firmly shut for students with disabilities.

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As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the IDEA, we reflect on how far we’ve come, and the work yet to do, to protect students with disabilities.pic.twitter.com/tqomZR6SGy

— U.S. Department of Education (@usedgov)November 28, 2025

One advocate for students with disabilities, whose cases make up the bulk of OCR’s work, suggested that Richey has contributed to the sense that “things are moving forward.”

Callie Oettinger, who publishes Special Education Actiona blog, highlighted Richey’s recentX postmarking the 50th anniversary of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Along with leading OCR, Richey is serving as acting assistant secretary for the office that oversees special education. Both offices, she said in an accompanying video, are “committed to vigorous enforcement.”

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“This is not the language of an agency sunsetting a program,” Oettinger wrote. She told The 74 she found Richey’s video “a breath of fresh air, passionate and positive.”

The department did not say whether recalling the staff was Richey’s idea. But one current OCR staff member, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid retribution, said “she seems interested in us doing our work.”

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