Add the Denver Public Schools to the list of educational institutions fighting the Trump administration’s blitz against girls sharing bathrooms with boys.
Superintendent Alex Marrero accused the administration of promoting an “anti-trans agenda through the weaponization of Title IX” after the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights found the district in violation of the federal law over its gender-inclusive restroom policies.
“At Denver Public Schools, we take pride in leading for Equity at every level of the organization,” he said in a Friday statement. “To our LGBTQ+ students, families, and supporters, we see you, and we will not stand for these attempts at your erasure.”
In December, the district converted a multistall girls’ restroom on the second floor of East High School to an “all-gender” facility, then responded to complaints of sex discrimination by opening the boys’ restroom on the same floor to “all genders.”
Not all girls were satisfied with the solution. One student complained that boys were “looking her up and down” when she entered the restroom, while multiple girls and parents expressed concerns about safety and privacy.
“Denver Public Schools violated Title IX and its implementing regulations by converting a sex-segregated restroom designated for girls in East High School to an ’all-gender’ facility and by allowing students to use the high school’s intimate facilities on the basis of their ‘gender identity’ rather than their biological sex,” said acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor.
“As a result, the District is creating a hostile environment for its students by endangering their safety, privacy, and dignity while denying them access to equal educational activities and opportunities,” he said in a Thursday statement.
The department gave the district 10 days to agree to a proposed resolution agreement, which calls for the district to redesignate all multistall, gender-inclusive restrooms to sex-specific facilities and rescind any policies letting students access “intimate facilities” based on gender identity.
Mr. Trainor warned that refusing to remedy the restroom situation could result in a loss of federal funding.
“Denver is free to endorse a self-defeating gender ideology, but it is not free to accept federal taxpayer funds and harm its students in violation of Title IX,” he said. “The Trump Administration will work relentlessly to hold accountable school districts that harbor the ideological fanatics and policies that sully students’ educational experience with sex discrimination.”
Mr. Marrero said the department acknowledged that the district had remedied its initial concerns about sex discrimination, but “now they have shifted their legal theory to claim that a hostile environment was created.”
“They have claimed Title IX prohibits the conversion of a girls’ restroom to an all-gender restroom,” he said. “They now claim Title IX prohibits the use of any multistall, all-gender restroom. This has never been true; it remains untrue today.”
Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments bans sex discrimination in educational institutions that receive federal funding.
The district’s “LGBTQ+ Toolkit” says: “Transgender, nonbinary and gender nonconforming students have the right to use facilities such as restrooms and locker rooms that match their gender as consistently expressed at school.”
The DPS Board of Education approved a policy in 2020 requiring schools to have at least one single-stall “all-gender” restroom.
The probe into East High School’s all-gender restroom that launched Jan. 28 was the first Title IX-directed investigation undertaken by the White House, but Mr. Marrero accused OCR of leaping to conclusions.
“While they label this a ‘directed investigation,’ make no mistake: there was no on-site review, not a single witness interview was ever conducted, and not one substantive conversation with any OCR attorney ever occurred,” he said. “The District’s requests for conversation, clarification, mediation, and discussion of remedies all went unanswered. This is unprecedented behavior from an OCR we no longer recognize.”
Last month, the department placed five Northern Virginia school districts on “high-risk” status, meaning that all federal funding is delivered by reimbursement only, after they refused to rescind their policies letting students access “intimate facilities” based on gender identity.
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.