Education Dept.’s Civil Rights Chief Steps Down Amid Controversy

WASHINGTON — The Education Department’s civil rights chief has for 40 years labored to enforce civil rights protections in the nation’s schools and universities, but few have attracted as much attention as Kenneth L. Marcus, who will leave the post this week after two years marked by dissension, disputes — and significant accomplishments.

Mr. Marcus, who came to the job as a fierce champion for Israel and a critic of anti-Zionist movements on college campuses, is credited with overseeing the completion of sexual misconduct rules and expanding civil rights for Jewish students amid rising anti-Semitism. In announcing his departure, he said he had restored the office’s status “as a neutral, impartial civil rights law enforcement agency that faithfully executes the laws as written and in full, no more and no less.”

But in recent months, two separate complaints that have been filed accuse Mr. Marcus of abusing his authority by forcing through cases that furthered his personal and political agenda. In January, a former lawyer in the Office for Civil Rights said Mr. Marcus forced employees to investigate a policy that allowed transgender athletes in Connecticut to compete on female sports teams, even though the lawyers questioned the merits of the case.

In another complaint filed in May with the department’s inspector general, nine civil rights groups said Mr. Marcus gave preferential treatment to a conservative Zionist group with close personal ties to him when he reopened a settled anti-Semitism case against Rutgers University.