There are two restrooms on the second floor at East High School in Denver, one for boys and one that is “all-gender,” and the Trump administration has a problem with that.

The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights announced a Title IX investigation Tuesday into Denver Public Schools for converting East’s girls’ restroom into an “all-gender” facility over winter break, leaving girls with no sex-exclusive facilities on the second floor.

“The alarming report that the Denver Public Schools District denied female students a restroom comparable with their male counterparts appears to directly violate the civil rights of the District’s female students,” Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said in a statement.

The office cited Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which requires schools that offer sex-separate facilities like bathrooms to ensure that “such facilities provided for students of one sex shall be comparable to such facilities provided for students of the other sex.”

The investigation may involve just one bathroom at one school in one state, but it represented an unmistakable national U-turn on transgender-rights policy under the Trump administration.

The Biden administration sought to erase distinctions between biological females and biological males who identify as female, by adding “gender identity” to Title IX, a hotly contested change that was vacated Jan. 9 by a federal judge.

Last week, President Trump signed an executive order banning the federal government from extending civil rights laws based on sex, including Title IX, to gender identity.

“Let me be clear: it is a new day in America, and under President Trump, OCR will not tolerate discrimination of any kind,” Mr. Trainor said. “I have directed OCR’s Denver regional office to investigate this matter fully.”

Scott Pribble, Denver Public Schools director of external affairs, said last week that the bathroom conversion was about convenience, not pushing an agenda.

“It was becoming a problem for kids that were trying to go to the bathroom during passing period,” Mr. Pribble told Denver NBC affiliate KUSA-9.

“They were running out of time, being late to the next class because the one or two single-stall bathrooms that they had to accommodate this just wasn’t enough for the need that was out there,” he said.

He said students requested the change, citing the 100-year-old school’s vast campus. The four-year high school has about 2,500 students.

At least one parent complained about the bathroom remodel at the school board’s work session earlier this month.

“Administration has sacrificed the comfort of these young females for this dubious change by now limiting their options,” said Lori Ramos, as shown on video. “We, as adults, should be protecting students at all costs, not using minors for this social experiment. This in my opinion is unlawful, immoral and is, in fact, a form of abuse.”

As to why the school remodeled the girls’ restroom instead of the boys’ facility, it evidently came down to urinals. Boys use them; girls don’t.

“It’s easier to convert a girls’ restroom to a gender-neutral restroom simply because of the type of hardware that is in place already in that room,” Mr. Pribble said. “The girls’ restroom has toilets that can be accessed by everybody, whereas a boys’ has different type of toilets that may be specific to specific genders and kind of changes the gender-neutral piece of it.”

Other DPS middle schools and high schools also have gender-neutral options.

In his Tuesday letter to Superintendent Alex Marrero, Mr. Trainor said the investigation “will examine whether the District discriminates against students on the basis of sex by installing multi-stall all gender restrooms in District school facilities.”

“Be advised that OCR’s initiation of a directed investigation is not itself evidence of wrongdoing,” he said.

In a statement, the district said it had not yet received the formal notice of investigation.

“We will be able to provide a comment once the notice has been received,” the district told The Washington Times in an email.

• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.