Human Rights Watch Says Civil Rights Enforcement Was Gutted. DOJ Opened New Cases in Kansas and Silicon Valley Anyway.

A 112-Page Case for Enforcement Abandoned

On Aug. 13, Human Rights Watch published a 112-page report titled "Remedies Abandoned: US Civil Rights Enforcement Under the Trump Administration," according to Al Jazeera's Aug. 15 coverage of the release. The report examines four agencies from January 2025 through early 2026: the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, which HRW says lost about 75% of its attorneys; the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights, which moved to lay off nearly half its staff in a single day and closed 7 of its 12 regional offices; the Housing and Urban Development Department's Fair Housing Office, which shrank dramatically; and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, now at its lowest staffing level in more than 40 years.

"While claiming to protect all Americans, the administration is rolling back systems that communities have long turned to for relief," said Trey Walk, a Human Rights Watch researcher, in the group's statement. HRW says the process continued on June 16, 2026, when the Education Department announced it would shift its civil rights investigation and enforcement work over to the Justice Department.

The Same Division Just Opened Cases in Kansas

While HRW's numbers describe staff losses, the record from this month shows the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and the Education Department actively pursuing a different set of civil rights complaints. Since August 2025, the department's Student Privacy Policy Office had been investigating four Kansas districts after Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach wrote to Education Secretary Linda McMahon alleging violations of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and Title IX.

In April 2026, that office found Topeka, Olathe, and Shawnee Mission Public Schools maintained policies instructing staff to withhold students' gender-identity information from parents, including printing diplomas under different names without parental consent. The department's Office for Civil Rights separately found Title IX violations for allowing males into girls' restrooms and other facilities.

Topeka signed a resolution agreement committing to corrective changes. Olathe and Shawnee Mission refused, and the Student Privacy Policy Office says it is now working with the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division on enforcement that could include judicial proceedings and loss of federal funding. "Schools that continue to hide information from parents will find that ED and DOJ stand ready to resolve violations of parental rights efficiently and effectively," McMahon said in the department's announcement.

Dhillon vs. Silicon Valley Over H-1B Hiring

Harmeet Dhillon, the Justice Department's top civil rights official, posted on X Thursday night that "this administration will not allow American employers to discriminate against American workers. It is illegal, wrong, and bad for our economy," according to Breitbart's account of the post.

The post came amid a fight inside the tech industry. Y Combinator founder Paul Graham argued companies should be free to hire whoever they judge "most qualified," regardless of nationality, days after Y Combinator's current CEO, Garry Tan, publicly rebuked one of the firm's partners, Ankit Gupta, for calling much of the country "flyover country," a remark Federal Trade Commissioner Andrew Ferguson also criticized. Tan said the firm backs hiring "Americans," defined as those "born in America or naturalized" — a definition that excludes an estimated 2 million people currently working under H-1B, L-1, J-1, O-1, H-4EAD, TN, OPT or CPT visas, per Breitbart's reporting.

Gupta had earlier mocked Vice President JD Vance's push to curb the H-1B program as "DEI for Americans," writing that "in a win for the woke left, DEI is back." Elon Musk, whom Breitbart notes is a South African-born immigrant, has long defended the H-1B system without qualification, tweeting in December 2024 that anyone who challenged it should "go to war" with him. Dhillon's post puts the Justice Department's civil rights office on Vance's side of that fight, not Musk's.

Courts Keep Striking Down the Detention Policy

On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled against the administration's policy of mandatory immigration detention without bond hearings, in a case called Buele Morocho v. Warden Philadelphia FDC, according to the ACLU, which brought the suit with the ACLU of Pennsylvania, the ACLU of New Jersey, and the law firm Palladino, Isbell & Casazza. The ACLU says it is the eighth federal appeals court to reject the policy, which DHS adopted in mid-2025 to require detention without bond for anyone who entered the country without inspection, including people with long-pending legal-status applications.

"The courts have repeatedly and resoundingly rejected the Trump administration's radical reinterpretation of our country's detention laws," said Michael Tan, deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project. ACLU of New Jersey senior counsel Farrin Anello called the practice "blatantly at odds with the plain text of the statute and the Constitution's guarantee of due process." The administration's response to the Third Circuit ruling was not included in the available court materials.

A New Suit Over Mail Ballots

The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the NAACP, Common Cause, and Black Voters Matter filed new claims in an existing federal lawsuit challenging a USPS rule tied to President Trump's executive order on mail-in voting. The groups argue the rule overrides state election law and could disenfranchise voters, including Black voters, seniors, rural residents, people with disabilities, and military members overseas, ahead of the November 2026 election.

"The Trump administration is trying to limit access to the ballot," said Damon Hewitt, president of the Lawyers' Committee. NAACP president Derrick Johnson called the rule "a direct assault on the fundamental freedoms of millions of Americans." Common Cause president Virginia Kase Solomón noted that "mail-in voting is so safe that even the president has used it twice this year."

The specific text of the USPS rule and the administration's stated justification for it were not detailed in the plaintiffs' filing. No ruling has been issued. Whether the rule takes effect before ballots go out this fall, and whether the Supreme Court eventually takes up the detention-policy question after eight straight appellate losses for the administration, remain open.