The US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights will inves­tigate allegations that the Fall River public schools are suspending black and Latino students at a disproportionate rate.

The complaint, filed in June by the American Civil Liberties Union, states that the school system’s disciplinary practices discriminate against minority and special-education students. In the school year that ended in 2010, more than 25 percent of black students and 23 percent of Latino students in grades K-12 were suspended, compared to 13 percent of white students, according to federal statistics.