DoEd

DoEd Finds Northern Virginia School Districts Violated Title IX

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.”

Related Articles and Resources:

Department of Education Launches Multiple Investigations Into Title IX Violations

Department of Education: Schools Embracing DEI Will Lose Funding

Department of Justice Launches Title IX Task Force to Protect Women’s Sports

Education Department Finds UPenn Violated Title IX & Women’s Rights

Education Department Warns Colorado: Children ‘Do Not Belong to Government’

‘Equipping Parents For Back-To-School’ – Updated Resource Empowers Parents

Fairfax School Board Votes to Suspend Students for ‘Maliciously Misgendering’ Other Students

Irate Parents Excoriate Loudoun County Schools Superintendent and Board Over Sexual Abuse Coverup

New Education Secretary Linda McMahon: ‘Send Education to the States’

Trump Ends Radical Indoctrination, Promotes Education Freedom

Trump Signs Executive Order Protecting Women’s Sports and Spaces

Virginia School District Ignore Parents Opposition, Implements ‘Gender Identity’ Lessons

What’s Your School District’s ‘Transgender’ Policy?

Image from Shutterstock.

Supreme Court Allows Education Department to Continue With Layoffs

The Supreme Court allowed the Department of Education (DoEd) to continue laying off employees Monday, temporarily suspending an order by a lower court judge that blocked the DoEd from firing employees and ordered it to reinstate any employees already laid off.

DoEd laid off almost 1,400 employees in March, as part of an effort to eventually shut down the department and return educational authority to state and local governments. Two groups then filed lawsuits challenging DoEd actions.

The stay was granted in a 6-3 decision. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissent, joined Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. The Court’s decision remains in effect while a court of appeals takes up the administration’s appeal of the case.

Justice Sotomayor’s dissent attacked the administration’s actions and the Court’s stay, arguing only Congress has authority to dismantle the DoEd:

When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it. Two lower courts rose to the occasion, preliminarily enjoining the mass firings while the litigation remains ongoing.

Rather than maintain the status quo, however, this Court now intervenes, lifting the injunction and permitting the Government to proceed with dismantling the Department. That decision is indefensible.

DoEd Secretary Linda McMahon released a statement applauding the decision:

Today, the Supreme Court again confirmed the obvious: the President of the United States, as the head of the Executive Branch, has the ultimate authority to make decisions about staffing levels, administrative organization, and day-to-day operations of federal agencies.

While today’s ruling is a significant win for students and families, it is a shame that the highest court in the land had to step in to allow President Trump to advance the reforms Americans elected him to deliver using the authorities granted to him by the U.S. Constitution. 

She reiterated her approval in a post on X:

As the Daily Citizen previously reported, President Trump signed an executive order in March directing McMahon to take “all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities.”

The order, “Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities,” stated the move “would provide children and their families the opportunity to escape a system that is failing them,” adding that the DoEd’s “main functions can, and should, be returned to the States.”

In explaining the rationale behind the layoffs and the closure of the department, the executive order stated:

Taxpayers spent around $200 billion at the Federal level on schools during the COVID-19 Pandemic, on top of the more than $60 billion they spend annually on Federal school funding. 

The Congress created the Department of Education in 1979. … Since then, the Department of Education has entrenched the education bureaucracy and sought to convince America that Federal control over education is beneficial.  While the Department of Education does not educate anyone, it maintains a public relations office that includes over 80 staffers at a cost of more than $10 million per year.

Today, American reading and math scores are near historical lows.  This year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that 70 percent of 8th graders were below proficient in reading, and 72 percent were below proficient in math.  The Federal education bureaucracy is not working.  

Secretary McMahon complied with the order by reducing the number of DoEd employees from 4,133 to “roughly 2,183 workers,” explaining that almost 600 employees had accepted “voluntary resignation opportunities and retirement.”

In response to the layoffs, two separate groups filed lawsuits. The first complaint was filed by 20 Democrat-controlled states and the District of Columbia. The second was filed by two school districts in Massachusetts and several teachers unions, including the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts, and American Association of University Professors.

United States District Judge Myong J. Joun, a Biden appointee, combined the two cases and ruled against the administration in May, issuing a preliminary injunction prohibiting the implementation of the executive order and mandating the reinstatement of “federal employees whose employment was terminated or otherwise eliminated.”

AFT, one of the plaintiffs, is the second largest teacher’s union in the country, representing 1.8 million teachers, school employees, federal and state employees and health care professionals. The radical organization, headed by President Randi Weingarten, opposes educational freedom; supports “LGBTQIA” activism; advocates for abortion; promotes transgender ideology, school policies and resources; and supports divisive Critical Race Theory dogma and practices.

The organization is even “opposed to self checkouts [sic] at retail stores.”

According to Open Secrets, the AFT’s Political Action Committee has spent $145 million in lobbying since 1990 – often opposing educational freedom and parental rights in education and supporting radical causes. Open Secrets also states that, in 2024, the organization gave no money to conservatives and $1.76 million to leftist candidates.

It’s unclear how this funding left-wing activism helps students learn basic skills and achieve educational success.

Nor is it clear whether money spent by the DoEd actually helps students – or if it just contributes to administrative bloating and federal interference with what should be a state and local issue.

As the lawsuits wend their way through our judicial system, the Daily Citizen will keep you posted about new developments.

Related Articles and Resources:

‘Decenter Book Reading and Essay Writing,’ Says National Council of Teachers of English

Department of Education Blew $1 Billion on DEI – Here’s Why It Matters

Dept of Ed Reduces Size, Scope; Grows Power to Cut DEI, Racism

Equipping Parents for Back-to-School

‘Equipping Parents For Back-To-School’ – Updated Resource Empowers Parents

Fighting for the Next Generation: School Board Elections and Extremist Education Ideology

Linda McMahon: ‘Listen to Parents, not Politicians’

LGBT Activists, NEA and Librarians Promote Annual ‘Transgender’ Reading Day in Schools

New Education Secretary Linda McMahon: ‘Send Education to the States’

President Trump Signs Executive Order Dismantling Department of Education Trump Ends Radical Indoctrination, Promotes Education Freedom

Image from Getty.