34 | AUGUST 19 • 2021 

EDUCATION

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graduated without Marcie’s 
help,
” Sessel said. 

RECENT WORK
Last year, Lipsitt helped more 
than 60 families file admin-
istrative complaints against 
the Department of Education. 
Yes, there was a pandemic and 
things abruptly turned on its 
head around the world, but that 
didn’t cancel out America’s stu-
dents’ rights to a FAPE.
“The IEPs were supposed to 
still hold up, even in the pan-
demic,
” Lipsitt said. 
She’s hoping some students 
will win an additional school 
year; for others she’s hoping for 
varying amounts of tutoring 
and/or extra speech and occu-
pational therapy.
Beyond helping individual 
kids and families, Lipsitt also 
works on a more global front. 
In 2014, she began checking 
all state education department 
websites around the country 
and found that all except two, 
Virginia and Maryland, had 
accessibility issues. 
Pictures need “alt-text” in 
order to be accessible for people 
who are blind; videos have to be 
closed-captioned properly for 
people who are deaf. 
Within a few years, Lipsitt 
had filed about 2,400 web acces-
sibility complaints against all 
of these state education depart-
ments — ironically some were 
specialized schools for children 
who are hearing or vision 
impaired. More than 1,000 
schools agreed to make changes 
to their website. 
“It was my biggest contribu-
tion to date,
” Lipsitt said.
In 2018, the Federal Office 
for Civil Rights decided it was 
waste of time to deal with so 
many complaints from a sin-
gle person and dismissed 672 
of them, a motion which was 

quickly nicknamed the “Marcie 
Lipsitt rule” by attorneys around 
the country. 
“I was outraged that a federal 
department would unlawfully 
violate my civil rights,
” Lipsitt 
said, who has jokingly referred 
to herself as a ‘frequent flier’ 
with the U.S. Office for Civil 
Rights.
 She promptly created a 
national media storm for aware-
ness and filed a federal lawsuit 
against them in June 2018. In 
the February 2020 settlement, 
the rule that dismissed Lipsitt’s 
complaints was rescinded, and 
the unlawfully dismissed com-
plaints were reopened. There’s 
now an Office of Inspector 
General (OIG) investigation 
pending on this issue. 
Most people might find the 
entire public education system 
daunting, and there are defi-
nitely many kinks in the system, 
but Lipsitt has no plans to quit. 
There’s plenty more work to do, 
and, she says voters have more 
power than they realize.
“People seem to refer to pub-
lic education like it’s a person, 
but it’s not. Public education is a 
set of federal rules, policies and 
procedures that are only going 
to be effective if we choose to 
hold them accountable,
” said 
Lipsitt. “That’s what keeps me 
awake and forever fighting this 
tortured mission.
” 

Lipsitt wearing a custom-made 
“211,000+ Kids Count” mask 
for an October 2020 rally 
on the steps of the Michigan 
Capitol. She had masks made 
for everyone who attended.

COURTESY OF MARCY LIPSITT