GAO-13-697R Transit Civil Rights

441 G St. N.W.

Washington, DC 20548

July 25, 2013

The Honorable Tim Johnson

Chairman 

The Honorable Mike Crapo

Ranking Minority Member

Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs 

United States Senate

The Honorable Bill Shuster

Chairman 

The Honorable Nick Joe Rahall, II

Ranking Minority Member

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure

United States House of Representatives

Public Transit: FTA’s Process for Overseeing Compliance with Federal Civil Rights

Requirements Incorporates Key Federal Practices

The Federal Transit Administration (FTA), within the Department of Transportation (DOT), is 

responsible for assuring that recipients of federal transit funding comply with a variety of federal 

requirements, including laws, regulations, and other requirements related to civil rights. The 

Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21)1 mandated GAO to study the 

FTA’s oversight of federal transit funding recipients’ compliance with public transportationrelated civil rights requirements and its process for handling complaints alleging violations of 

such civil rights. We focused our review on 1) the methods FTA uses to oversee federal transit 

funding recipients’ compliance with federal civil rights requirements, and 2) the extent to which 

FTA’s process for handling civil rights complaints is consistent with key federal practices for 

addressing complaints of discrimination. We focused on FTA’s oversight of recipients’ 

compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, as amended2 and disabilityrelated provisions in Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973;3 as well as Title VI of the 

Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VI), as amended.4

 

1

Pub. L. No. 121-141, 126 Stat. 405.717-18 (2012).

We briefed your staff on the results of our 

review on June 11, 2013 (see enclosure). This letter summarizes the information that we 

presented at these briefings. 

2

Pub. L. No. 101-336, 104 Stat. 327 (1990).

3

Pub. L. No. 93-112, 87 Stat. 354 (1973).

4

Pub. L. No. 88-352, 78 Stat. 241, 252 (1964). Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, prohibits the 

exclusion from participation in denial of benefits of, and discrimination under federally assisted programs on the 

ground of race, color, or national origin.
Page 2 GAO-13-697R Transit Civil Rights

To identify methods FTA uses to oversee recipients’ compliance with federal civil rights 

requirements we reviewed applicable laws,5 and other guidance, including the laws cited above; 

DOT, FTA and Department of Justice (DOJ) guidance on processing civil rights complaints;6

and FTA’s Title VI Circular. We reviewed and analyzed data from DOT’s civil rights complaints 

tracking system (XTRAK) database on ADA complaints and Title VI complaints to determine the 

number of complaints FTA received from Fiscal Year 2009 through Fiscal Year 2012.

7

To identify key federal practices for addressing complaints of discrimination, we reviewed the 

Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Investigation Procedures Manual for the Investigation and 

Resolution of Complaints Alleging Violations of Title VI and Other Nondiscrimination Statutes.

To 

assess the reliability of the XTRAK data, we reviewed relevant documentation, interviewed 

knowledgeable officials about data collection procedures and use of the data, and conducted 

electronic testing of the data. We found the data to be sufficiently reliable for the purposes of 

this report. We also interviewed FTA officials about the agency’s oversight of recipients’ 

compliance with laws and other requirements as well as the agency’s complaints process. 

8

We conducted this performance audit from January 2013 to July 2013 in accordance with 

generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and 

perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our 

findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained 

provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives.

Based on our analysis, we identified nine key federal practices for processing civil rights 

complaints. We then assessed FTA’s process against the key practices by examining FTA’s 

policies and procedures, and interviewing FTA officials to determine whether FTA’s process 

incorporated the key practices. We also reviewed and analyzed data from DOT’s XTRAK 

database to determine the length of time FTA took to resolve complaints and the results of 

complaint investigations. While we examined FTA’s policies and procedures and determined the 

length of time it took to resolve complaints and the results of complaint investigations, we did 

not evaluate the extent to which FTA followed its policies and procedures for handling 

complaints. 

In summary, we identified four methods FTA uses to assure that recipients of federal transit 

funding comply with civil rights requirements:

• Requiring recipients to self-certify that they assure compliance with applicable civil rights 

requirements—Each year, agencies receiving federal transit funding must self-certify 

 

5

In addition to Title VI, the ADA and the disability-related provisions in Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 

we also reviewed age discrimination provisions in the Age Discrimination Act of 1975, as amended (Pub. L. No. 94-

135, 89 Stat. 728 (1975), sex discrimination provisions in Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, as amended 

(Pub. L. No. 92-318, 86 Stat 235-373 (1972)) and various laws prohibiting religious discrimination (e.g., 42 U.S.C. § 

1981, and 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000b. 2000e).

6

DOJ is responsible for coordinating the implementation and enforcement of various nondiscrimination provisions by 

agencies (E.O. 12250).

7

DOT implemented XTRAK during 2008 and 2009. We analyzed complaints from the 2009 through 2012 timeframe 

in order to obtain 4 full years of complaint data.

8

Under Executive Order 12250, DOJ is to coordinate and ensure the enforcement of Title VI and similar 

nondiscrimination statutes by federal agencies that provide federal financial assistance. DOJ’s manual is designed to 

provide guidance on the investigation of complaints of discrimination against recipients of federal financial assistance.
Page 3 GAO-13-697R Transit Civil Rights

and assure that they will comply with applicable federal laws, regulations, and 

guidance.

9

• Issuing guidance to inform recipients of their responsibilities—FTA revised its Title VI 

guidance in 2012. FTA also issued draft guidance for ADA in October 2012, and 

anticipates issuing this guidance in June 2014. Other guidance includes webinars FTA 

developed to help grantees become familiar with the revised Title VI guidance and 

frequently asked questions and other documents to assist grantees with ADA 

requirements. 

• Administering a complaints process—FTA’s complaints process allows the public, 

advocates, and others to file complaints about transit agencies’ and other funding 

recipients’ potential violations of civil rights. FTA tracks complaints in DOT’s XTRAK 

database. From 2009 through 2012, FTA received 547 complaints of potential violations 

of the ADA and Title VI. Of these, 510 concerned violations of the ADA. As of April 2013, 

FTA had closed all but 9 of these complaints. 

• Conducting oversight reviews of funding recipients’ compliance with laws and 

requirements—FTA conducts the following periodic oversight reviews:

o Triennial reviews covering 24 areas of a transit agency’s operations, including a 

grantee’s compliance with ADA and Title VI (conducted once every 3 years). 

o State management reviews examining state DOTs’ implementation of FTA’s grants 

for rural areas and the elderly and disabled, typically once every 3 years.

o Discretionary reviews for compliance within specific areas such as ADA and Title VI. 

According to FTA officials, complaints can trigger these reviews. Additionally, FTA 

may consider negative findings from triennial reviews in selecting agencies for these 

reviews. As we have previously reported, FTA has limited resources for discretionary 

reviews and thus conducts relatively few of these reviews each year.10

FTA’s policies and procedures for processing civil rights complaints incorporate the nine key 

federal practices that we identified based on our analysis of DOJ guidance. Table 1 shows a 

comparison of identified key federal practices with FTA’s policies and procedures for processing 

civil rights complaints.

 

 

9

DOT is required to take affirmative action to ensure that recipients of federal financial assistance are in compliance 

with specified nondiscrimination protections. See, 42 U.S.C. § 5332(c).

10 GAO, ADA Paratransit Services: Demand Has Increased, but Little is Known about Compliance, GAO-13-17

(Washington, D.C.: Nov. 15, 2012).
Page 4 GAO-13-697R Transit Civil Rights

Table 1: Key Federal Practices for Addressing Civil Rights Complaints Compared with 

FTA’s Policies and Procedures

In addition, our review and analysis of XTRAK data showed that:

• FTA’s average times for resolving complaints greatly decreased in recent years. In 2008 

and 2009, FTA had a large backlog of ADA complaints, which made up the majority of 

civil rights complaints FTA received in those years. However, FTA has since taken 

actions to reduce the backlog and address issues that caused it. As a result, average 

processing times for ADA and Title VI complaints greatly decreased from Fiscal Year 

2009 through Fiscal Year 2012. FTA’s average processing times for processing such 

complaints in 2009 and 2012 were about 401 days and 63 days, respectively. 

• Few FTA investigations of complaints resulted in findings of violations. Of the total ADA 

and Title VI complaints received from Fiscal Years 2009 through 2012, about 5 percent 

resulted in Letters of Findings of violations11

See the enclosure for additional details of our findings.

 and another 6 percent resulted in Letters of 

Concern—where no violations are found, but related problems are found. 

We provided a draft of this correspondence to DOT for its review and comment. DOT officials 

generally agreed with the findings of the correspondence and offered technical corrections that 

we incorporated, as appropriate.

 

11All Letters of Findings of violations were related to ADA complaints. For example, one recipient was found in 

violation because it had operated vehicles with non-functioning lifts for more than five days, making it difficult for 

some riders with disabilities who depend on such lifts to access the vehicles. In another example, another recipient 

was found in violation because in times when the lift on its fixed route buses was non-operative, it failed to provide 

alternate transportation within 30 minutes to disabled riders.
Page 5 GAO-13-697R Transit Civil Rights

We are sending copies of this report to the appropriate congressional committees and the 

Secretary of Transportation. This report will also be available at no charge on the GAO website 

at http://www.gao.gov. Should you or your staff have questions concerning this report, please 

contact me at (202) 512-2834 or wised@gao.gov. Contact points for our Offices of 

Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page of this report. Key 

contributors to this report were Heather MacLeod (Assistant Director), Jessica Bryant-Bertail, 

Leia Dickerson, Lynn Filla-Clark, Geoffrey Hamilton, Ying Long, Josh Ormond, and Elizabeth 

Wood. 

David Wise 

Director 

Physical Infrastructure Issues 

Enclosure

(542213)
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Enclosure
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