Post-Election Strategies for Parents of Children with Disabilities Needing Special Education or 504 Accommodations and Supports

As the dust starts to settle, to the degree it can following the 2024 election cycle, parents of children with disabilities who need special education or 504 accommodations and supports are now searching for answers as to how the promised changes to public education in the United States will affect their children. Many of these parents had no idea prior to the election what the fallout for public education and students with disabilities would be, and are only now starting to realize the magnitude of the changes on the horizon.

This is not the first time the disabled community has had to deal with seismic shifts in the legal landscape as it relates to disability rights laws, and I'd like to quiet the worried minds of those parents who are on the verge of freaking out, right now, to tell you that "This to shall pass." This isn't my first rodeo and I've gotten really good at dealing with the ineptitude, stupidity, apathy, and egocentricity of the types of tiny minds responsible for discriminatory practices against the most vulnerable members of our communities.

I don't say this to minimize what's coming. We are about to enter into some very trying times in the special education community following the inauguration of the 47th President of the United States and the installation of his cabinet in January 2025. Number 47 has already promised to shut down the U.S. Department of Education without any regard for how this will affect the millions of children with disabilities who rely on federal civil rights protections being implemented and enforced by the U.S. Department of Education, including those who receive federally funded special education programming.

This is causing widespread panic among families of children with special needs and public-school employees who are employed to service this population of learners. The concern is entirely justified, but the panic is not, at least not for now, and I need everyone to calm down and let me explain why that is.

Regardless of Number 47’s inclinations and intentions, the United States still is not a dictatorship, at least not yet. It certainly won’t instantly become a dictatorship the second Number 47 is sworn in. There are laws in place that control how our federal agencies are organized, the duties they are required by law to perform, and their respective enforcement authorities.

No presidential administration has the authority to simply put an end to our laws. It will take more than Number 47’s four years in office to fight Congress, the courts, and the will of the American people to shut down the U.S. Department of Education and all the laws it is responsible for implementing and enforcing. We have to remember that he tried to do this once before with Betsy DeVos when he was Number 45.

DeVos actually shut down the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) upon assuming office. It took 18 months of litigation to get it reopened, but it was still reopened because it exists to carry out specific legally mandated duties that could not be performed if it no longer existed. It was the existing laws on the books that mandated OCR’s existence, and those laws remain on the books now. Further, the legal precedent for preserving OCR is now also on the books, so Number 47’s new Secretary of Education is already prevented from repeating that approach by existing caselaw, and OCR is operated by a bunch of lawyers who are likely going to rely on that existing caselaw to resist any future efforts to shut down OCR.

We also have to consider who Number 47