Prism: Trump’s move to dismantle Department of Education sparks concerns over impact on civil rights and student support services

March 20. 2025

Managing Attorney of ERA’s End Sexual Violence in Education program Maha Ibrahim is featured in a Prism article about Trump’s Executive Order attempting to dismantle the Dept. of Education.

Maha Ibrahim, a senior attorney at gender justice nonprofit Equal Rights Advocates, warned of a dangerous shift toward a resegregated and unequal educational system that could disproportionately harm vulnerable students, especially those from communities of color, students with disabilities, women, and LGBTQIA+ youth.

“This resegregation […] is turning education into a commodity for the rich, stripping students of their civil rights,” Ibrahim said in an interview. “And it’s despicable. It’s despicable that we’re attempting to dismantle 50 years of hard-won progress and creating an environment where certain students are actually hunted down, are targeted, are pursued relentlessly, harassed relentlessly, and excluded relentlessly.”

While Trump signed the executive order, the Education Department cannot be eliminated entirely without congressional approval.

“I think we’re going to see a lot of what we’ve already seen, which is lawsuits,” said Ibrahim. “Even with all of us knowing it takes Congress, that’s really on the law side. What really needs to happen is on the advocacy side. The public needs to be making quite a bit of noise to their representatives—regardless of who their representatives are—because this is really an attack on our structure of government and our checks and balances.”

Read the article.