DoEd Finds Northern Virginia School Districts Violated Title IX

by Jeff Johnston | July 28, 2025 | Culture

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) found that five Northern Virginia school districts violated Title IX by allowing “students to access intimate, sex-segregated facilities based on the students’ subjective ‘gender identity.’”

As previously reported by the Daily Citizen, the investigation began in February after America First Legal filed a complaint into the “transgender” policies of the Northern Virginia school districts: Alexandria City, Arlington, Fairfax County, Loudoun County and Prince William Country.

The OCR “issued a proposed Resolution Agreement to the Divisions [school districts],” the agency announced in a press release. Each district must agree and comply within 10 days or risk imminent enforcement action, including referral to the U.S. Department of Justice.

The school systems must take the following actions:

Rescind the policies and/or regulations that allow students to access intimate facilities based on their “gender identity” rather than their sex.

Issue a memorandum to each Division school 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, and that Title IX ensures women’s equal opportunity in any education program or activity including athletic programs.

Adopt biology-based definitions of the words “male” and “female” in all practices and policies relating to Title IX.

In a press release, America First Legal touted the victory, with Senior Advisor Ian Prior stated, “Each of these school districts has spent years bowing to the altar of transgender ideology while ignoring the law, common sense, and the concerns of its students and their parents.”

“A male student in these school districts can wake up, claim to be ‘gender expansive or transgender,’ and then have a pass to use female locker rooms and restrooms. If the female students are uncomfortable sharing those locker rooms and restrooms with that male student, it is the female students who must make alternative arrangements. That is sex discrimination.”

The OCR justified the inquiry into the districts based on their violation of Title IX and numerous incidents of inappropriate behavior by males in sex-segregated spaces, “The investigation 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.”

The Divisions are also the subject of several lawsuits, informal complaints, and reports, which allege that students in the Divisions 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.

There are many egregious examples of Northern Virginia schools embracing radical “gender ideology,” including:

The Fairfax County School Board adopted a policy to punish students who “maliciously misgender” or “deadname” other students.
A “gender fluid” male student, dressed in a skirt, entered a girls restroom at Stone Bridge High School and sexually assaulted a ninth grade girl, in Loudoun Country. The district lied about the incident and moved the boy to a different high school – where he assaulted another girl.
“A registered child sex offender was charged with indecent exposure and other charges in late October 2024 after he was accused of exposing his genitals in a girls’ locker room at an Arlington high school,” reported ABC News. The outlet added that the district “allows people to use locker rooms and bathrooms of their choice based on gender identity – not biological sex.”
Loudoun County Public Schools spent almost $2 million on books that deal with “diversity” – including books that teach children as young as kindergarten about homosexuality and transgenderism.
The Virginia Department of Education adopted policies requiring schools to obtain written permission from parents before treating their children as transgender, but Fairfax, Alexandria, Prince William County and Arlington school districts stated they would not comply.

It’s not just girls whose privacy and dignity are under threat from “transgender school policies.” At Stone Bridge High School, a female student, identifying as transgender, recorded boys in a male locker room complaining about her presence there.

Fox News reported, “It is illegal to record inside locker rooms,” but instead of investigating the girl, Loudoun County Public Schools investigated the boys for allegedly violating the school’s transgender policy, which was adopted in spite great opposition from parents.

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin and Attorney General Jason Miyares are now investigating the school district.

It’s good news that the Department of Education is working to enforce Title IX and protect girls and women’s – and boys – sex-segregated spaces. The agency’s acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said of the recent charges against these five school districts,

“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.”

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