Fragmented Civil Rights Enforcement and the Limits of College Access: Reimagining Equity for Multilingual Learners with Disabilities Across K–12 and Higher Education Systems

This manuscript advances fragmented civil rights enforcement as a conceptual framework for examining how overlapping disability- and language-related civil rights obligations are operationalized across K–12 and higher education systems. Drawing upon disability law, language-access policy, organizational and implementation scholarship, intersectional perspectives, and research on educator preparation and postsecondary access, the analysis examines how legally intersecting protections may nevertheless be implemented through distinct but interdependent enforcement, governance, fiscal, and professional structures. Grounded in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Equal Educational Opportunities Act (EEOA), Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and related federal guidance and jurisprudence, the framework conceptualizes fragmentation as a systems-level condition in which domain-specific compliance may coexist with discontinuities in integrated educational access for multilingual learners with disabilities. The analysis further positions higher education as a structural mediator: institutions prepare professionals responsible for implementing civil rights obligations while also receiving students transitioning from IDEA’s K–12 entitlement structure into a different postsecondary disability-access environment. The framework therefore directs attention to the institutional relationships connecting assessment, programming, professional preparation, resource allocation, accountability, family participation, and educational transition rather than treating these functions as isolated policy concerns. Rather than prescribing a single program model or additional statutory regime, the manuscript identifies cross-system coherence as an important dimension of civil rights implementation and offers a theoretically grounded model for future empirical examination of how institutional coordination shapes educational access across the educational continuum.