July 2 was the 60^th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. This law, clearly one of the most important pieces of legislation in our nation’s history, was the first of a number of civil rights laws. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibited discrimination against persons on the basis of race, color, or national origin. Civil rights laws confer personal rights to be free from discrimination. These federal laws created classes of persons who are legally protected from discrimination because of a shared, and usually immutable, characteristic. The language Congress used in the Civil Rights Act became the model for use in other civil rights laws such as Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibited discrimination against persons on the basis of sex, and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which prohibited discrimination against persons on the basis of disability.

Compare the language used in these three laws:

Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

No person in the United States shall, on the grounds of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance. (codified at 42 U.S.C. 2000d).

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972

No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance. (codified at 20 U.S.C. 1681).

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973

No otherwise qualified individual with a disability in the United States…shall, solely by reason of her or his disability, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance. (codified at 29 U.S.C. 794).

In addition to the language of these laws, all three share a few common characteristics. First, the three laws prohibit protected persons from being (a) excluded from participation in, (b) denied the benefits of, or (c) subjected to discrimination under any program or activity. This means that people in the class of persons protected by these laws (i.e., race, color, national origin, sex, or disability) are entitled to participate in the same programs and receive equal services as are persons who are not protected by these laws. Second, programs or activities covered by these three laws must be receiving federal financial assistance to be covered. Third, enforcement takes place through federal agencies, such as the Civil Rights Division in the US Department of Justice and the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in the US Department of Education.

OCR is responsible for enforcing these and other civil rights laws in schools. OCR investigates discrimination on the basis of (a) race, color, and national origin under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964; (b) sex under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972; and (c) disability under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This enforcement extends to all state education agencies, elementary and secondary school systems, charter schools, colleges and universities, vocational schools, state vocational rehabilitation agencies, libraries, and museums that receive U.S. Department of Education funds. OCR also issues policy guidance statements.

In September 2021, OCR issued a virtual document titled “Back to School: Supporting Educational Environments Free of Discrimination, A Resource Collection for Elementary and Secondary Schools.” In this document, Officials at OCR provided the URLs of fact sheets, question and answer documents, Dear Colleague Letters, and other materials to assist school personnel in avoiding discrimination under Title IV, Title IX, Section 504, and Title II of the ADA. This is an excellent resource for all educators. The pdf of the OCR collection can be found at https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/back-to-school-binder-postsecondary-sept-2021.pdf.