On March 21, 2025, President Trump stood in the Oval Office and confirmed what many special education advocates feared: special education programs are leaving the Department of Education. They're moving to the Department of Health and Human Services, where they'll be overseen by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

This isn't the "what if" scenario anymore. Trump signed the executive order on March 20. The announcement came the next day. HHS is the destination, not the Department of Labor, which was the other option on the table. And RFK Jr., who has repeatedly promoted debunked theories linking vaccines to autism, is the person who will oversee federal special education policy.

Parents who followed the earlier debate know what's at stake. The question now isn't whether this will happen. It's what you need to do.

What's Changing

The Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) currently sits inside the Department of Education, where it has operated for nearly 50 years. OSEP distributes about $15 billion in annual grants to states and schools, monitors state compliance with IDEA, funds parent training centers, and enforces federal special education law.

Under the announced plan, those responsibilities move to HHS. The announcement didn't include details about which specific programs transfer, what the timeline looks like, or how enforcement will work under a health-focused agency instead of an education-focused one.

What we know: the executive order calls for closing the Department of Education. Moving IDEA programs to HHS was outlined in Project 2025, the conservative policy document that has shaped much of the administration's education agenda. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon told CNN that special education "will more than likely rest in HHS," noting that special education was housed in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare before the Department of Education was created in 1979.

What we don't know: whether Congress will approve this. Federal law requires Congress to amend IDEA and authorize the transfer before it can legally happen, and several lawsuits challenge the layoffs and restructuring. Some legal experts argue the transfer can't proceed without congressional action.

What Congress Already Blocked

In February 2025, Congress blocked two related proposals in the federal spending bill:

• Converting IDEA funding to a block grant that states could use more flexibly, potentially outside IDEA's requirements
• Moving IDEA funding to another agency without explicit congressional approval

IDEA's legal framework remains intact. The $15 billion in annual funding is still earmarked for special education under IDEA rules. But the agency responsible for enforcing those rules is changing.

What HHS Oversight Means in Practice

HHS is a health and social services agency. It oversees Medicaid, Medicare, public health programs, and medical research. HHS doesn't regulate K-12 schools, employ staff who spend their careers working with state education agencies on compliance monitoring, or have a built-in understanding of how IEPs work, how schools report data, or what technical assistance districts need when they're struggling to meet IDEA requirements.

OSEP staff have education law expertise because that's what the job requires. HHS staff have health policy expertise because that's what their job requires. Moving oversight to HHS means starting from scratch on building institutional knowledge about how special education works in schools.

Chad Rummel, executive director of the Council for Exceptional Children, put it plainly: "IDEA is an education law, not a healthcare law, and belongs at the Department of Education."

What this means for enforcement: when you file a complaint that your child's IEP isn't being implemented, the federal agency reviewing state compliance will be staffed by people whose background is health policy, not education law. When a state requests technical assistance on improving outcomes for students with disabilities, the guidance will come from an agency that doesn't routinely interact with school districts. When compliance monitoring happens, the reviewers won't have the same baseline understanding of how schools operate, which means the people doing enforcement will be learning the job while doing it.

What Hasn't Changed

IDEA is still federal law. Your child's IEP is still a legally binding document. The requirement that schools provide a free appropriate public education (FAPE) in the least restrictive environment (LRE) hasn't been touched. Due process rights, evaluation timelines, and parent participation requirements remain exactly as they were.

Congress would have to amend IDEA for any of that to change. The executive order doesn't have that power.

What's changing is who enforces those protections and how they do it. That matters more than it sounds like it should.

What Happened to OSEP Staff

In October 2025, the Trump administration laid off approximately 460 people at the Department of Education, including nearly everyone in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS), which houses OSEP. A federal judge temporarily halted the layoffs on October 15.

When the federal government shut down later that fall, Congress negotiated a deal to reopen. Part of that deal required reinstating all employees laid off in October, including OSEP staff. The agreement prohibited any new layoffs until January 30, 2026.

OSEP staff returned to work. But the reprieve is temporary. After January 30, the administration can proceed with layoffs again. And even if individual staff members keep their jobs, the office they work for is being moved to a different department with a different mission.

The institutional knowledge OSEP built over five decades, including how to review state plans, what technical assistance works, and which compliance issues predict larger systemic problems, doesn't transfer automatically when the office changes agencies. Some of it will be lost. Some of it will have to be rebuilt from scratch at HHS.

RFK Jr.'s Record on Disability

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spent years promoting the discredited claim that vaccines cause autism. During his confirmation hearing in January 2025, he refused to say vaccines don't cause autism, despite overwhelming scientific evidence showing no link. In November 2025, as HHS secretary, he personally ordered the CDC to alter language on its website that said vaccines don't cause autism, replacing it with a statement calling that conclusion "not an evidence-based claim."

He has characterized autistic children in deeply troubling terms, saying "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." He announced a "massive testing and research effort" to determine the cause of autism, to be completed by September, framing autism as a problem to be solved rather than a form of neurodiversity.

Disability rights advocates, including the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, have condemned Kennedy's statements and policy positions, warning that his approach prioritizes "unethical junk science and dangerous misinformation" over evidence-based support for autistic people and their families.

This is the person who will oversee federal special education policy.

Parents have a right to know that because it shapes the priorities and perspective of the person leading the agency.

Where Enforcement Responsibility Sits Now

Right now, and for the foreseeable future, your state education agency is the primary enforcer of IDEA. States receive IDEA funding, report compliance data, and investigate complaints. The federal role has always been oversight: monitoring whether states are doing their job, providing technical assistance when they're not, and withholding funding or intervening when compliance failures are severe.

If OSEP moves to HHS, that federal oversight role doesn't disappear. But the agency doing it changes, and with it, the institutional culture and expertise that shape how oversight happens.

What doesn't change: your first stop for IDEA complaints is still your state education agency. Most IDEA enforcement has always happened at the state level. Federal involvement typically comes later, after a pattern of state-level failures or a particularly egregious violation that warrants federal investigation.

If the Department of Education is eventually abolished, the Department of Justice has authority to enforce civil rights laws, including IDEA. DOJ's Civil Rights Division already handles some disability discrimination cases under Section 504 and the ADA. That authority could expand if DoE ceases to exist.

What You Should Do Right Now

You don't have to wait for the transfer details to be finalized before taking action. Here's what to do today:

Document everything about your child's IEP services. Write down what services are in the IEP, how often they're supposed to happen, who provides them, and whether they're being delivered as written. If services are being missed, document when, how many sessions, and what reason the school gave. If your child is regressing or not making progress, document that too. This isn't paranoia. It's creating a paper trail that will matter if you ever need to file a complaint or request a hearing.

Know your state's special education complaint process. Every state has a complaint investigation process separate from due process hearings. If your child's IEP isn't being implemented, you can file a state complaint. Find out where to file, what information the complaint needs, and what the timeline is. State enforcement is the front line. It will remain the front line even after federal oversight moves to HHS.

File complaints through your state first, not the federal government. Federal complaints typically require that you've already gone through state-level resolution or that the violation involves a systemic failure the state isn't addressing. Start local. Exhaust state remedies before escalating to federal oversight.

Check whether your district is already under compliance monitoring. Some districts are under corrective action plans or compliance agreements because of previous IDEA violations. If your district is one of them, those agreements don't disappear when OSEP moves to HHS. The monitoring continues. But the agency doing the monitoring may change.

Join a parent training and information center or community parent resource center. These federally funded centers provide free training on IDEA rights and help parents navigate the IEP process. OSEP funds them. If OSEP moves to HHS, that funding stream may continue, but the oversight and technical assistance the centers receive could shift. Connect with your local center now while the infrastructure is still intact.

Don't wait to address IEP issues. If your child's services aren't working, request an IEP meeting now. If the school is out of compliance, file the complaint now. The transfer to HHS isn't an excuse to delay action. It's a reason to act sooner rather than later, while the enforcement infrastructure you're familiar with is still in place.

What Comes Next

No one knows exactly how this will unfold. The executive order has been signed. The announcement has been made. But the legal questions remain: Can this happen without Congress amending IDEA? Will the courts block the transfer? If it does proceed, when does it take effect?

What's certain is that IDEA's protections remain law. Your child's right to FAPE, to an IEP, to services in the least restrictive environment, to parent participation in placement decisions: those don't change because the federal agency overseeing compliance changes.

What's also certain is that enforcement capacity matters. An agency that doesn't understand how schools operate, staffed by people who don't have education law expertise, will take time to build the institutional knowledge OSEP developed over five decades. During that transition, state-level enforcement becomes even more important. And your documentation of what's happening in your child's classroom becomes the evidence that makes enforcement possible.

You can't control what the federal government does. You can control how prepared you are when it happens.