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Policy leader blames Biden administration’s ‘poor policies’ for backlog of civil rights complaints
It has been nearly two years since the Mountain States Legal Foundation filed a complaint with the Department of Education, accusing the University of California at Berkeley’s Gill Tract Community Farm of racial discrimination in violation of Title VI.
However, William Trachman, an attorney with Mountain State Legal, told The College Fix there has been little movement on the complaint. Filed in 2024, it alleges the farm only allowed “people of color” to attend on Saturdays.
“The Office of Civil Rights did take a witness interview on October 25, 2024, but has been completely silent since then. The San Francisco OCR office closed in March of 2025, so our case has likely been transferred to the Seattle office, and I’m sure the backlog there and shutdown won’t help things,” Trachman told The Fix in a November email.
In January, Trachman confirmed to The Fix that there has been no further action.
UC Berkeley, a public university, runs the farm. When the allegations initially surfaced, university spokesperson Dan Mogulof told the New York Post that the university would investigate the situation.
The Fix reached out to the media relations office and university spokespersons numerous times in January, requesting an update on the investigation, but did not receive any responses.
Gill Tract Community Farm also did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has a huge backlog of complaints. Some have blamed the Trump administration, pointing to layoffs and policy changes.
But Michael Shires, vice chair for education opportunity at the American First Policy Institute, said the Biden administration’s “poor policies” led to a deluge of new complaints in the office.
“The slow pace of complaint reviews is tied to the large backlog of some 20,000 cases that President Trump inherited when he took office a year ago. This backlog was fueled by the Biden Administration’s poor policies, especially the inappropriate redefinition of sex under Title IX to include gender identity,” Shires said in a recent interview.
This has led to “almost 23,000 complaints filed in the last year of the Biden Administration,” which is more than twice the total when he took office in 2020, he told The Fix.
Despite the delays, Shires believes things may be heading in a more positive direction.
“Under President Trump, the efficiency of the Office of Civil Rights’ handling of complaints has improved dramatically. Recent moves to buttress the workforce in the area by the Education Department demonstrate their commitment to cleaning up the mess created by the ineptitude of the Biden Administration,” Shires said.
Speaking specifically on the accusations against the Gill Tract Farm, Shire said, “All Americans should be concerned when skin color is used to determine access to opportunities or services.”
“It is a basic violation of our fundamental American values and the law. If the allegations are proven true, then appropriate remedial actions should certainly be taken,” he said.
Operated by the university, the farm is a research, education, and extension project “focused on ecological farming and food justice,” according to its website. It welcomes the public to harvest food if they “help with weeding, planting, and watering.”
Mountain State Legal’s complaint, filed in 2024, cited a series of text messages from a farm manager as evidence of the racial discrimination, The Fix reported at the time.
“Saturdays are exclusively BIPOC … Exceptions have only been made for events that are BIPOC-centered and with plenty of advance notice and planning,” the farm manager wrote.
The manager also advocated for “upholding boundaries around that safe and sacred space,” according to the complaint.
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