Many of the office’s cases over the decades have served as a catalyst for broader policy change and social reforms.

Federal workers are being hit with more cuts — this time targeting the Office of Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education.Several Chicago-based workers were let go in the cut to the office Thursday.

The Education Department’s civil rights branch is losing nearly half its staff in the Trump administration’s layoffs, effectively gutting an office that already faced a backlog of thousands of complaints from students and families across the nation.