Kenneth L. Marcus is an American attorney, academic, and government official. He is the founder and leader of the Brandeis Center. He was the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the United States Department of Education from August 6, 2018 through July 9, 2020, after which he resumed his position at the Brandeis Center.
Marcus previously served as the Lillie and Nathan Ackerman Chair in Equality and Justice in America at Baruch College in New York. He also previously served as staff director of the United States Commission on Civil Rights (OCR).
Education
Kenneth L. Marcus received a Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, from Williams College in June 1988. He was elected a member of Phi Beta Kappa in June 1987. He received a Juris Doctor from University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, Boalt Hall in 1991.
Career
Berkeley Three case
Early in his career, Marcus served as lead counsel for the Berkeley Three, three neighbors in Berkeley, California who had protested against a planned low-income housing project for the homeless in their neighborhood in 1993 by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). A housing rights group complained about the protests and four federal HUD officials began investigating the neighbors. The neighbors, represented by Marcus and the Center for Individual Rights, sued the officials alleging that the investigation had violated their First Amendment rights. In 1998, a federal district court ruled in favor of the neighbors and the verdict was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 2000 which, in a unanimous opinion, held that the investigating officials "could not have reasonably believed their actions to be consistent with the First Amendment." Publicity regarding the case forced HUD to change its policy on fair housing investigations.
Fair Housing Enforcement
Marcus served in various roles in the George W. Bush administration, beginning as General Deputy Assistant Secretary at the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity. Marcus also joined with Department of Justice officials to announce the resolution of various high-profile disabilities lawsuits. In a congressional hearing in 2002, he testified about the agency's performance under his stewardship. He said the agency's aged-case backlog had reduced from 80 percent to 37.1 percent and that HUD increased the number of accessible housing units for a person with a disability by over 1200 through major cases in the District of Columbia and Boston. He also announced new initiatives to address predatory lending and lending discrimination, as well as enhanced attention to housing problems faced by persons in the Southwest border area.
Office for Civil Rights
Marcus served as Staff Director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 2004 to 2008.
In May 2004, Marcus issued a letter admonishing recipients of federal education funds that in order to comply with Title IX they must designate a Title IX coordinator because OCR had found that some institutions were not complying with the requirement. Members of the National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education had urged OCR to issue such guidance to strengthen Title IX. The Feminist Majority Foundation welcomed the letter.
Marcus joined with then-Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Rene Alexander Acosta to issue guidance warning school districts to cease racially segregated activities. Their joint letter warned that practices such as holding segregated high school proms or naming separate race-based sets of recipients for senior-year honors (such as homecoming queen) "are inconsistent with federal law and should not be tolerated."
In an official letter, Marcus also clarified that OCR would interpret Title VI and Title IX as if they protected the rights of ethnic groups that shared a religious faith, to the same extent as if they did not share a common faith. This policy has been applied to Jewish, Muslim, and Sikh students.
In October 2004, Marcus issued a notice amending the regulations implementing Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. The purpose of the notice was to facilitate for school districts to offer single-sex public elementary and secondary education.