Big cuts at the Education Department’s civil rights office will affect vulnerable students for years to come

  The U.S. Department of Education cut its workforce by nearly 50% on March 11, 2025, when it laid off about 1,315 employees. The move follows several recent directives targeting the Cabinet-level agency.

  Within the department, the Office for Civil Rights – which already experienced layoffs in February – was especially hard hit by cuts.

SCOTUS should preserve workplace protections for LGBTQ people

  Soon after Y.B. took the night shift as a forklift operator, her boss started harassing her because she is a lesbian.

  “I want to turn you back into a woman. I want you to like men again,” he said. “Are you a girl or a man?”

  Y.B. endured the harassment for weeks, but eventually complained to the company’s human resources department. The next day, she was fired.

Charles C. Haynes: At the High Court, rare win for workplace religious freedom

  “This is really easy.”

  So said Justice Antonin Scalia when he announced last week’s Supreme Court 8-1 ruling in Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Abercrombie & Fitch.

  The case involved Samantha Elauf, an American Muslim who claimed that Abercrombie & Fitch denied her a job because she wore a headscarf to a job interview.

The March on Washington: Looking back on 50 years

  August 28 marks the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. It is a time to celebrate a movement, a speech, and leaders who influenced generations of people around the globe and achieved genuine progress for diverse groups of Americans.

  There is no doubt that America has come a long way since the civil rights era. But while the indignities of segregated public accommodations have largely disappeared, another significant theme of the march remains highly relevant half a century later: the struggle for economic opportunity and equality. It was perhaps due to the march and the great success of the larger civil rights movement that opposition to this sort of equality was immediate, persists to this day, and is reflected in all three branches of the federal government.