New HHS’ Office for Civil Rights Director Paula M. Stannard
Paula M. Stannard worked at the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services as the former Chief Legal Counsel. She is now designated as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights Director. Stannard succeeds Acting OCR Director Anthony Archeval, who took the position in January 2025 when Melanie Fontes Rainer resigned.
Stannard is not new to the HHS since he previously worked as Senior Counselor and Advisor to past HHS Secretaries Tom Price and Alex Azar from 2017 to 2021. She was also the Acting General Counsel and Deputy General Counsel from 2003 to 2009. Stannard has over 16 years in private legal practice, which includes 10 years as a litigation associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom in Chicago and six years as legal counsel in the Health Care Practice Group at Alston and Bird, LLP in Washington, D.C..
Paula has deep institutional expertise, persistent focus, and an unwavering dedication to civil rights. Her leadership can drive the Office for Civil Rights to accomplish President Trump’s civil rights plan with clarity, strength, and purpose. As OCR director, Stannard supervises the implementation of the HIPAA Security, Privacy, and Breach Notification Rules. OCR enforces these rules to ensure HIPAA compliance and protect the privacy and security of medical information. To date, this 2025, OCR has resolved 16 enforcement actions with civil monetary fines or settlements, the same as the number of financial fines paid in 2024. The collected financial fines in the first 5 months of 2024 are also more than the combined financial fines collected in 2022 and 2023.
Although financial penalties increase year-over-year, Stannard starts her leadership at OCR with a big backlog of investigations, plus an increase in hacking incidents and ransomware attacks nowadays. In 2023 and 2024, OCR got roughly two times as many large data breaches reported as in 2018, but OCR’s budget did not increase because Congress could not agree to the request of OCR to increase the funding.
Besides a bigger workload, OCR got fewer investigators, which increased the investigations backlog, and many positions are still vacant. Based on the HHS fiscal 2026 budget request, in late fiscal year 2024, OCR’s backlog was 6,532 investigations; however, in May 2025, the backlog was 13,274 investigations.
Stannard will likewise lead OCR’s efforts to enforce federal civil rights, moral, and religious freedom legislation, which forbid discrimination based on national origin, race, color, sex, age, religion, and disability. The enforcement of civil rights legislation is OCR’s priority at the start of the Trump administration, which includes investigations of universities, hospitals, and medical schools over supposed discriminatory practices. OCR Director Paula Stannard is all set to work on the important and remarkably visible focus of OCR and safeguarding the civil rights of Americans who take part in the projects or agencies that HHS manages and funds.