Trump’s cuts to the Department of Education affect the agency’s capacity to carry out what has long been one its central responsibilities: to hold education institutions that receive federal funding to account for civil rights violations.  

While for now the department is only being eroded, Trump’s education secretary, Linda McMahon, said on Fox News earlier this week that Trump has directed her to eventually shut the department down altogether.   

Referring to mass layoffs at the agency earlier this week, McMahon said, "But what we did today was to take the first step of eliminating what I think is bureaucratic bloat, and that’s not to say that a lot of the folks — you know, it’s a humanitarian thing to a lot of the folks that are there ... They’re out of a job."

The Department of Education has historically acted as a check to the power of universities, which are empowered to themselves investigate complaints of discrimination made by students and employees.

That means that if someone who filed a discrimination complaint with MSU feels the university failed to appropriately investigate it, they can then request the Department of Education to essentially check over the institution’s work — requests it sometimes grants.

In other cases, the Department of Education can carry out "directed investigations," meaning rather than a student or family requesting the agency’s investigation of a university, the federal government orders the probe. 

The agency can do things like fine universities, require them to update or review policies, or subject them to increased oversight if it discovers wrongdoing in either variety of investigation.

The most notable example of the Department of Education's involvement at MSU?

The agency fined MSU $4.5 million in 2019 after investigating how the institution handled sexual assault complaints against Nassar. Upon that investigation’s conclusion, the Department of Education also subjected MSU to increased oversight. 

The State News reported in September that MSU was fined by the Department of Education an additional near $3 million for failing to comply with certain provisions of that oversight.

In the waning days of the administration of former President Joe Biden, the Department of Education had 22 open civil rights investigations into MSU, according to a government webpage documenting pending cases. That page was last updated on Jan. 14, six days before Trump took office for a second time.

Since then, ProPublica reported last month that the Trump administration ordered the Department of Education to halt around 10,000 racial, sexual and disability discrimination cases, though a follow-up story said disability discrimination cases were permitted to continue.

The outlet reported this week that seven of the Department of Education’s 12 regional civil rights offices were closed down, including the one in Cleveland, which handles investigations into MSU. That report also said 1,300 of 4,000 Department of Education employees have been laid off.

What this means for MSU at this juncture is largely unclear. 

MSU spokesperson Emily Guerrant said the university has "received no formal direction from the federal Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights regarding the investigations."

Asked if the Department of Education has continued to contact MSU in the course of any of the civil rights probes into MSU open at least as of Jan. 14, Guerrant said, "Well, as far as we know, nothing to indicate to the contrary."

"I’m not involved in each of those, and I didn’t talk to the person who's up close and personal as to what that communication frequency has been like, but we’ve received no formal guidance to change course or alter anything."

The State News reached out to Department of Education spokesperson Alberto Bentancourt and received an automatic reply saying "I am currently out of the office," and "I will not have access to emails during my absence." The spokesperson has not responded to several follow up emails.

The State News also emailed the Department of Education’s main press contact and received no reply. 

The uncertainty around the Department of Education’s investigations into MSU encompasses one case The State News reported on in November. That story revealed MSU was being investigated by the federal agency for its handling of a sexual discrimination complaint filed by a student against an Olin Health Center practitioner. 

That probe put MSU in a particularly thorny position, once again defending itself amid sexual assault allegations against one of its healthcare providers. 

But the dramatic downsizing of the Department of Education — paired with MSU’s claim that it hasn’t heard from the agency about the status of investigations — raises a question about whether MSU has been, in effect, let off the hook.