The Education Department this week announced a plan to move core special education functions from the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services to the Department of Health and Human Services, a change that would put some of the federal government’s most sensitive disability duties under a different roof.
The move matters now because it would change who oversees the systems that help students with disabilities get services, challenge discipline tied to disability-related needs and gain access to classrooms built for them. Katy Neas said a student denied services, punished for disability-related behavior or blocked from an accessible classroom needs one federal education system that can see the whole picture and act.
OSERS is not a minor office. It helps people with disabilities achieve competitive integrated employment, and its work sits at the center of special education policy. The shift announced earlier this week comes as part of a broader series of partnerships the Education Department said it was forming with other U.S. government agencies, but the biggest change is the one that would pull OSERS’ core functions into Health and Human Services under Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The legal problem is hard to ignore. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, last reauthorized in 2004 when President George W. Bush signed it, says the office must exist within the Department of Education. That makes the administration’s plan look less like a routine reorganization than a test of how far it can move responsibilities without colliding with the statute that created the office’s current home.
The concern is sharpened by recent history. During last year’s government shutdown, the Trump administration fired almost all OSERS employees, leaving advocates worried about whether the office can be weakened by attrition before it is formally moved. Kennedy’s own comments have only deepened the alarm. In April, he said, “These are kids who will never pay taxes. They’ll never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.”
That is why disability rights advocates are reading this announcement as more than an administrative shuffle. The Trump administration and Republicans going back to Ronald Reagan have long called for abolishing the Department of Education, and the plan now in front of them raises the same old question in a new form: whether the administration can transfer the work without running afoul of the law that says OSERS belongs inside Education. The next answer that matters is not whether the agencies can announce a partnership, but whether Congress or the courts will accept a move the statute appears to block.
