The department is giving the districts ten days to voluntarily resolve their alleged violations before enforcement actions are taken.
The U.S. Department of Education announced on Friday the conclusion of its investigation into five public school districts in northern Virginia, finding that they have broken federal civil rights law by basing access to purportedly sex-segregated facilities on students’ “gender identity” rather than their sex.
By allowing male students to access intimate female spaces such as restrooms and locker rooms, the Department alleges, the districts violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits sex discrimination in school or educational program that receives federal funding.
This investigation, opened in February of this year by the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights, targeted Alexandria City Public Schools, Arlington Public Schools, Fairfax County Public Schools, Loudoun County Public Schools, and Prince William County Public Schools. According to the Department, the probe “was based on complaints alleging that the Divisions have similar anti-discrimination policies pertaining to ‘transgender-identifying’ students, which violate the sex-based protections of Title IX.”
“Although this type of behavior was tolerated by the previous Administration, it’s time for Northern Virginia’s experiment with radical gender ideology and unlawful discrimination to come to an end. OCR’s investigation definitively shows that these five Virginia school districts have been trampling on the rights of students in the service of an extreme political ideology,” Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said in a statement.
In the announcement of its findings, the Department of Education also noted that the school districts in question are “are also the subject of several lawsuits, informal complaints, and reports” regarding their consideration of students’ “gender identity” to access sex-segregated facilities. Such complaints allege that students “avoid using school restrooms whenever possible because of the schools’ policies, and that female students have witnessed male students inappropriately touching other students and watching female students change in a female locker room.”
Based on its finding that the five Virginia school districts infringed Title IX protections, the Department is giving the districts ten days to voluntarily resolve their alleged violations. Otherwise, the districts “risk imminent enforcement action including referral to the U.S. Department of Justice.”
The Department is requiring the school districts to adopt a number of policy changes. First, they must “rescind the policies and/or regulations that allow students to access intimate facilities based on their ‘gender identity’ rather than their sex.” It also demands that the districts must issue a memorandum to each of their schools “explaining that any future policies related to access to intimate facilities must be consistent with Title IX by separating students strictly on the basis of sex.”
Beyond intimate facilities, the districts must stress to schools that “Title IX ensures women’s equal opportunity in any education program or activity including athletic programs.” Finally, the Department is requiring that the school districts “adopt biology-based definitions of the words ‘male’ and ‘female’ in all practices and policies relating to Title IX.”
In support of its findings, the Department cites the U.S. Supreme Court case United States v. Skrmetti, decided earlier this summer, which held that state laws banning hormone treatments and puberty blockers for minors with gender dysphoria did not violate the 14th Amendment. “In so holding,” the Department says, “the Supreme Court acknowledged that a person’s identification as ‘transgender’ is distinct from a person’s ‘biological sex.'”
Today’s finding by the Education Department appears to accord with an executive order that President Trump issued on January 20, 2025, the first day of his new administration. That order, titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” withdrew all federal recognition for “gender identity.”
Trump’s executive order stated that “it is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.” The president further declared that, under his administration, “the Executive Branch will enforce all sex-protective laws to promote this reality.”
The Trump administration’s enforcement of Title IX to prohibit school facilities segregated according to gender identity rather than sex contrasts sharply with the Biden administration’s former approach. In 2024, the Biden administration finalized regulations to prevent discrimination based on “gender idenity” and sexual discrimination. On January 9, days before Trump took office, a federal judge struck those rules down, determining that they overstepped the president’s legal authority.
On January 31, the Education Department under Trump pledged that it would “return to enforcing Title IX protections on the basis of biological sex in schools and on campuses.” Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said in a statement, “The Biden Administration’s failed attempt to rewrite Title IX was an unlawful abuse of regulatory power and an egregious slight to women and girls. Under the Trump Administration, the Education Department will champion equal opportunity for all Americans, including women and girls, by protecting their right to safe and separate facilities and activities in schools, colleges, and universities.”