After the Washington Examiner exclusively obtained an administrative complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Education to protect vulnerable schoolgirls, Defending Education lodged a second complaint against New Mexico’s second-largest school district, Las Cruces Public Schools.
Given that this dangerous policy enforced in the state’s school districts is no longer an isolated issue, President Donald Trump’s administration should investigate New Mexico’s second-largest school system for the welfare of America’s children now.
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CONSERVATIVES FILE CIVIL RIGHTS COMPLAINT AGAINST ALBUQUERQUE SCHOOLS
“LCPS prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity, even though a federal court and the Department of Education rejected that interpretation of Title IX eight months ago,” Defending Education’s complaint, shared exclusively with the Washington Examiner, states.
LCPS’s decision to allow biological males who self-identify as women into female private spaces runs contrary to federal court precedent. In Craig v. Boren, the Supreme Court held that sex-based distinctions must serve important governmental objectives and be substantially related to achieving those objectives.
Additionally, the LCPS policy violates the gender identity interpretation from the Department of Education, presidential executive orders, Title IX, and the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
“Both school districts are inviting federal investigations,” Sarah Parshall Perry, Vice President & Legal Fellow at Defending Education, told the Washington Examiner.
“Title IX was enacted to secure equal educational opportunities for the women who were unable to enjoy all the scholastic offerings available to their male counterparts. But Las Cruces and Albuquerque schools seem to think that “sex” and “gender identity” are one and the same. They are not. And the Supreme Court has never held otherwise, Perry added.
Perry is absolutely correct. President Donald Trump’s administration should not permit LCPS to abscond from the enforcement of its zealous policy.
LCPS’s “Gender-Inclusive Schools” policy, commonly referred to as the “JBD-R policy,” states that all “students shall have access to the restroom that corresponds to their gender identity.”
Recently, LCPS extended the policy to allow biological males who identify as females to “participate in physical education classes and intramural sports in a manner consistent with their affirmed gender identity,” and even access locker rooms of the opposite biological sex.
Even before its recent extension, this policy already stood in clear violation of U.S. law. By prolonging it, the district not only deepens its legal offense but also heightens the danger it poses to vulnerable students.
As the complaint states, “LCPS’s restroom and locker room policies and its intramural athletic policy appear to violate Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause.”
The Department of Education’s own Title IX guidance makes plain that its protections extend to all school operations — whether on campus, on buses, or at any off-site activity sponsored by the school. Yet this policy follows students wherever school activities occur, compounding the threat to their safety.
The Trump administration must act without delay. The well-being of Las Cruces’s children depends on it.
VIRGINIA DEMOCRATS ARE PROTECTING A TRANSGENDER SEX OFFENDER
As mentioned in Defending Education’s complaint, the Department of Education must “investigate all the allegations in this complaint, act swiftly to remedy unlawful policies and practices, and order appropriate relief.”
Defending Education was right to call out the district’s dangerous agenda. A federal investigation into LCPS could establish an important precedent, one that discourages other school systems nationwide from embracing or enforcing similarly harmful, trauma-inducing policies.