In the California case, , the conservative justices reinstated a December district court decision that temporarily blocked schools from keeping such information private or from changing names and pronouns when parents say it violates their religious beliefs. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit had granted Attorney General Rob Bonta’s request for an emergency stay while the district court hears the case, and Monday’s order overruled that stay.

The Supreme Court relied on last year’s ruling in in which the justices sided with religious parents who wanted to opt their elementary school children out of lessons related to LGBTQ-themed storybooks. 

“California’s policies will likely not survive the strict scrutiny that Mahmoud demands,“ the order said, adding that “parents who seek religious exemptions are likely to succeed” at the district court level. 

Referencing one of the families in the case, they wrote: “At the beginning of their daughter’s eighth-grade year, she attempted suicide and was hospitalized. Only then did her parents learn from a doctor that she had gender dysphoria and had been presenting as a boy at school.”

U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon praised the decision. “Huge win for parental rights in education!” she on X. The administration agrees with many conservative groups that schools have kept parents in the dark about their children’s social transition and should proactively notify them when their child asks to use different pronouns or bathrooms. 

U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez’s temporary injunction said that California schools can’t mislead parents about their children’s gender identity and must prominently display wording that says parents “have a federal constitutional right to be informed if their public school student child expresses gender incongruence.” 

Bonta has argued that the state’s policies, including a 2024 law barring districts from forcing teachers to “out” students, don’t prevent schools from sharing information with parents. But he said Benitez’s blanket ruling — and the Supreme Court’s decision to keep it in place — puts students at risk if they’re not ready to disclose their gender identity. Advocates for LGBTQ students agree.

“In its rush to expand religious influence in public schools, the Supreme Court prioritized religious exemptions over children’s success and well-being and trampled on the rights and futures of transgender students without considering the full facts of the case,” Gaylynn Burroughs, vice president for education and workplace justice at the National Women’s Law Center, said in . 

‘The court is impatient’

That’s the same point that Justice Elena Kagan, one of the three liberals on the court, made in her dissent, which Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson joined. Kagan agreed that “parents have rights” when it comes to their children’s “life choices,” but that the court should wait until the case plays out before the Ninth Circuit. 

“The court is impatient: It already knows what it thinks, and insists on getting everything over quickly,” she wrote. 

If the conservatives wanted to consider the “thorny legal issues” involved, she added, they should agree to hear a Massachusetts case, Foote v. Ludlow School Committee, that makes similar arguments for parental rights.

“By recent count, almost 40 cases raising due process and/or free exercise objections to similar school policies are currently in the judicial system,” she wrote. “By granting certiorari on one (or more) of those cases, the court could ensure that the issues raised by such policies receive the careful, disciplined consideration they merit.”

The court has repeatedly delayed its decision whether to grant or deny a hearing in the Foote case and another one from . Both are scheduled for consideration again this Friday.

In a separate statement concurring with the majority, which Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined, Justice Amy Coney Barrett disagreed that the court was hasty in overruling the Ninth Circuit. 

“Under California’s policy, parents will be excluded — perhaps for years — from participating in consequential decisions about their child’s mental health and wellbeing,” she wrote. 

Teachers from the Escondido Union School District, near San Diego, originally filed the case in 2023, saying the state’s guidance violates their Christian faith. Parents later joined the case. Without giving a reason, the court denied the teachers’ request to set aside the Ninth Circuit’s stay, but Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said they would have sided with the teachers as well. Justice Sonia Sotomayor said she would have denied the relief for all of the plaintiffs.

David Mishook, an attorney with F3 Law, which represents California school districts, said that given the Supreme Court’s “strong language,” he wouldn’t be surprised if Bonta drops any challenge to Judge Benitez’s injunction.

While neither Benitez nor the Supreme Court come right out and say that teachers must proactively disclose a child’s gender identity to parents, the order “suggests that teachers, and by extension their employers, now stand at great risk if they do not discuss gender expression with parents.”

The court’s ruling follows a late January decision in which the Education Department that California’s policies violate the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which gives parents the right to inspect their children’s educational records. She pointed to instances in which schools used trans students’ preferred names and pronouns in school databases, but parents would see legal names when they logged in. 

The state risks losing over $5 billion in federal funds if it doesn’t comply with the department’s demands, including allowing districts to pass parental notification policies.

Bonta promptly the department, saying the penalty would cause “imminent and irreparable injury to California.” 

California Attorney General Rob Bonta Wednesday as part of an ongoing dispute over whether schools should proactively notify parents if their children change their gender identity. 

The lawsuit comes in response to Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s a concluding that the state violated the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and in her words, “egregiously abused its authority by pressuring school officials to withhold information about students’ so-called ‘gender transitions’ from their parents.”  Her letter cited a 2025 law that prohibits districts from forcing educators to “out” students against their will.

The agency has threatened to revoke all of the state’s federal education funding, nearly $5 billion annually. But in the filing, Bonta said the department has “failed to demonstrate even a single violation of FERPA,” which gives parents the right to review education records. The potential loss of funding, he wrote, “presents an imminent and irreparable injury to California and infringes upon the state’s substantial interests.”

The Trump administration says California schools violated parents’ rights by pressuring schools to keep students’ gender transitions a secret.

In announced Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Education told state officials that they can resolve the dispute by treating any school “gender support plans” as education records available for parents’ inspection and let districts enforce “pro-parental notification approaches.”

“Under Gavin Newsom’s failed leadership, school personnel have even bragged about facilitating ‘gender transitions,’ and shared strategies to target minors and conceal information about children from their own families,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement. The department referenced a public records request by a showing that six California districts changed the names or pronouns of 300 students in the 2023-24 school year. The announcement doesn’t spell out what penalties, if any, the state might face if it doesn’t comply.

But most student privacy experts say the department is misinterpreting the Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act. While FERPA gives parents the right to inspect their children’s education records, it doesn’t compel districts to notify a parent if their child changes their gender identity at school.

The department launched last March, based on a request from Julie Hamill, a conservative attorney who argued that state policies and guidance amounted to a “scheme” to conceal students’ gender identity from parents. Now an assistant U.S. attorney, Hamill cited a Q&A document, later rescinded, that to consult students before deciding whether to share information on their gender identity, including with their parents. Some districts, she wrote, would change students’ names and pronouns in school databases, but parents would see legal names when they logged in. 

Federal officials also took aim at a California law, passed in 2025, which says districts can’t force educators to “out” students against their will. Liz Sanders, spokeswoman for the California Department of Education, said officials were reviewing the department’s findings and referred The 74 to previous statements. In October, the the new law, known as the SAFETY Act, doesn’t prohibit school staff “from sharing any information with parents” and doesn’t override FERPA. 

The department’s determination further escalates an ongoing, emotional debate between state leaders who say students have a right to privacy and an administration that holds such decisions are the responsibility of parents. Advocates for LGBTQ students and many educators say they’re trying to protect students who might face rejection or abuse at home. But others call such actions “parental exclusion” policies that violate parents’ constitutional rights to direct the upbringing of their children. 

“If a student is contemplating life-altering changes, the least a school can do is notify their parent or guardian,” McMahon .

Lydia McLaughlin, the parent whose experience Hamill cited in the letter to federal officials last January, called the news “bittersweet.” She seeking emails and schoolwork from the Hart Unified High School District, north of Los Angeles, that would demonstrate how school staff were socially transitioning her child from female to male. Administrators initially refused to meet with McLaughlin and cited a that protects trans students’ access to programs, sports and facilities that align with their gender identity. 

McLaughlin never filed a formal FERPA complaint with the Education Department’s Student Privacy Policy Office because she ultimately got the records she was seeking after threatening to sue the district. She told The 74 last year that she believed a lot of the communication between staff members using the student’s preferred male name wasn’t in writing.

Now in college, her child identifies as a girl, “loves feminine clothes again” and has returned to ballet dancing after a five-year break.

“It’s been a long road to this moment,” McLaughlin said. “I only dreamed that there would be some sort of justice for what the school district did.”

FERPA experts disagree with the department’s conclusion. Elana Zeide, a law professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said officials didn’t point to a specific violation in which a parent was denied access to education records. And many districts still follow a legal precedent that doesn’t consider staff emails to be part of a student’s official record. 

“You could not like these policies at all. You can be vehemently opposed to them,” Zeide said. “But that doesn’t mean you can accuse the state of a violation when there aren’t the facts to support it .”

But Lance Christensen, vice president of the conservative California Policy Center, called the department’s announcement. a “big deal.”

“We’re thrilled that the federal government is finally taking federal law seriously and is interested in protecting the natural rights of parents,” he said.

Jorge Reyes Salinas, a spokesman for Equality California, an LGBTQ advocacy group, called the decision “part of a broader, deliberate campaign to attack transgender young people and undermine their ability to learn and thrive in school.”

Cases before the Supreme Court

The department’s demands come as the U.S. Supreme Court considers whether to hear three different cases, including one from California, focused on the same issues.

In a , U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez ruled in December in favor of two teachers from the Escondido Union School District, near San Diego, who said that requiring them to keep a student’s gender identity private violated their Christian faith. Parents later joined the lawsuit against the state. 

Benitez’s broad ruling said that California schools must prominently display wording that says parents “have a federal constitutional right to be informed if their public school student child expresses gender incongruence” and that school staff also have a right to “accurately inform” parents. 

Attorney General Rob Bonta appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which blocked the ruling. The teachers are now asking the Supreme Court to overrule the lower court, but the justices have not yet said whether they’ll get involved. Florida, Montana and West Virginia filed a brief in support of the teachers and parents, saying the “Constitution places the burden on states to respect fundamental rights, not on citizens to claw back the right to parent their own children.”

But Bonta told the court that the consequences of compelling the disclosure of gender identity would be “irreversible” for many students. Benitez’s ruling, he said, would leave teachers and other school staff confused about what they can and can’t do.

The high court is also debating whether to hear two other cases in which parents allege that educators supported students’ gender identity changes at school without their knowledge. It takes only four justices to decide whether to hear a case. 

Jeff and January Littlejohn of Florida the Leon County district, alleging that Deeklake Middle School violated their rights by supporting their child’s gender transition from female to male behind their backs. 

Officials said educators were following guidance, which discourages “outing” LGBTQ students..

A federal district court dismissed the case. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit also ruled for the school system, saying that educators’ actions did not “shock the conscience,” in a legal sense.

“Defendants did not act with intent to injure,” the court said. “To the contrary, they sought to help the child.”

The First Circuit Court of Appeals issued a in Foote v. Ludlow School Committee. In that case, parents said staff at Baird Middle School in Ludlow, Massachusetts, concealed that their 11 year-old identified as genderqueer at school and was using a new preferred name. 

The three-judge panel wrote that while they sympathized with the parents’ desire for information about their children, the law doesn’t “require governments to assist parents in exercising their fundamental right to direct the upbringing of their children.”

But she didn’t face the camera alone. 

She was joined by Nicole Neily, a longtime advocate and president of Defending Education. It was Neily’s organization that scoured district websites for evidence of gender plans — what they call “parental exclusion policies.” In a letter to Maine Education Commissioner Pender Makin, McMahon gave Defending Education credit for gathering the documents through public records requests and referenced two conservative websites, and , that published the group’s findings. 

“We’re proud to stand with you and President Trump as you ensure that the law is being followed and that the school districts do not infringe on parents’ rights,” Neily said in the video.

Neily offered similar quotes when the Office for Civil Rights opened investigations into school district equity policies in Chicago and Fairfax, Virginia. In February, Defending Education filed about Chicago’s , which aims to increase the number of Black teachers, improve student behavior and make instruction more culturally relevant. Neily argues the initiative denies other students “educational opportunity because of the color of their skin.”

And she gets results.

On May 22, two days after for the Fairfax investigation, OCR launched a probe into admission criteria at the district’s elite Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. Defending Education argues the district discriminates against white and Asian students. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an argument against the policy in February 2024 and turned down a similar case from Boston in December.

An Education Department spokeswoman told The 74 that officials welcome support from advocates working to protect parents’ and students’ rights. Neily did not respond to questions about the department’s communications strategy.

But she is just one of several activists working with the department to advance the Trump administration’s education agenda. Since February, at least 10 department press releases announcing investigations have featured quotes from advocates representing eight organizations. They all echo the administration’s position and, like the secretary, stake out conclusions before the OCR team has begun investigating.

In July, McMahon announced an investigation into transgender students playing on girls’ sports teams in Oregon. The probe, the press release said, was prompted by a complaint from the America First Policy Institute — the she chaired for four years before she became secretary.

In the release, Jessica Hart Steinmann, the think tank’s executive general counsel, said, “Thanks to Secretary McMahon’s leadership, this investigation is moving forward as a vital step toward restoring equal opportunity in women’s athletics.”

The organization helped set the agenda for Trump’s return to the White House and the president appointed several of its leaders to . At least six former AFPI staffers work at the Education Department. Craig Trainor, who handled litigation at AFPI, has been serving as acting assistant secretary for civil rights, but was confirmed last week to a top position at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The press releases create “a significant pressure point on educational institutions because they’re presumed to have violated the law from the get-go,” said Jackie Wernz, an attorney who worked in the civil rights office during the Obama and first Trump administrations. The department, she said, “has changed from a neutral arbiter of civil rights disputes to an advocacy organization.”

Those who have worked at the department during both Democratic and Republican administrations, including in Trump’s first term, say such tactics could hinder investigators’ ability to gather evidence fairly. 

When OCR opens investigations, it assures subjects that a complaint is just the beginning of the process and doesn’t mean the department has reached a decision. In from 2020, Kimberly Richey, acting assistant secretary for civil rights during Trump’s first term, promised a school district that OCR would act as a “neutral fact-finder.”

“Historically … on both sides of the aisle, the department has been extremely cautious about making public statements about open investigations,” said Jill Siegelbaum, who spent 20 years in the department’s general counsel’s office before she was let go as part of McMahon’s mass layoffs. By including comments from critics, she said, the department risks immediately putting districts “on the defensive.” 

Richey, who was confirmed last week to once again lead OCR, did not respond to requests for comment.

‘Undeniable’ impact

Administration allies downplayed the significance of the actions, comparing it to former first lady Jill Biden’s decision to host American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten and National Education Association President Becky Pringle as the first official when President Joe Biden took office in 2021. A former community college professor, Jill Biden is an NEA member.

Later that same year, parents and advocates in Virginia obtained emails from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing the unions played a decisive role in keeping schools closed during the pandemic. The AFT pushed for language that the CDC ultimately recommended saying the agency could amend its guidance if it detected new variants of the virus. Republicans argue the unions exacerbated declines in students’ learning and mental health. 

“It’s far better for the secretary to engage with Defending Education, which champions parents and students, than with Randi Weingarten’s AFT, a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party’s progressive elite,” said Ginny Gentles, an education and parental rights advocate at the conservative Defense of Freedom Institute. Neily, she added, has had an “undeniable” impact. “Nicki Neily and Defending Education have aggressively challenged the corrupt status quo, amplifying parents’ voices and demanding accountability.”

Catherine Lhamon, who ran OCR during the Obama and Biden administrations, dismissed the comparisons. She likened the warm welcome for the teachers union presidents to a political event. OCR, by contrast, is supposed to be neutral. By opening investigations with accusatory quotations from department officials and their allies, she said, the Trump administration is putting its thumb on the scale. Under Biden, she recalled, investigations frequently led to outcomes that disappointed the advocates who brought them.

“There were lots of cases during my time where the complaints were appalling. Then we’d investigate and find that they weren’t,” she said. “You might think at the beginning of a case you’re going in one direction and then when you investigate, you find you’re going in another. That’s the job of an investigator.”

The actions by the department are among several designed to radically repurpose and drastically downsize a civil rights office that had been focused on “transgender ideology and other progressive causes” and that “muddled the enforcement of laws designed to protect students.” In March, she laid off roughly 250 employees and shuttered seven of 12 regional offices. The moves are still being challenged in court. Over the weekend, after another round of layoffs, one attorney who received notice that she had lost her job said three more offices had been closed.

One former OCR attorney said pairing McMahon’s comments with those from advocates compromises the agency.

“Each administration had their favorite issues and those issues sometimes got priority treatment. But I am unaware of any complainants consistently being put to the head of the line,” said Paul Grossman, who led the San Francisco OCR office for 30 years under both Republican and Democratic administrations. 

Under previous administrations, it wasn’t unusual for the department to consult studies from advocates or think tanks and use their data to make a point, he said. “But individual leaders were not treated like or publicized as celebrities.”

Wernz, who now advises districts and colleges, said the Biden administration may have planted the seeds of the current practice. In some cases, the department under the previous regime issued statements after districts agreed to change policies and practices, but before OCR had completed a full investigation. In her view, some of those press releases were  

“The Biden administration kind of opened the door like a crack to do this,” Wernz said. “And the Trump administration has just kicked the door down.”

A majority of the department’s press releases about OCR work highlight Trump administration priorities, like focusing Title IX on biological sex and eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Many of them include supporting quotes from like-minded advocates, including:

• , executive director of the conservative Southeastern Legal Foundation. She represents drama teacher Stacy Deemar, who filed a complaint against the Evanston-Skokie district in Illinois in 2019. The district, she alleged, racially discriminates against white students and staff through racial affinity groups, training sessions focused on race and “privilege walks.” In the , participants take a step forward or backward based on issues like whether they learned about their own culture in school, have two parents with college degrees or grew up in a poor neighborhood. 
  
  Under former Secretary Miguel Cardona, the department dismissed the complaint. 
  
  “Dr. Deemar has waited patiently for the harms inflicted by the Biden Administration to be rectified,” Hermann said in the release. “For the sake of our children and our country, the time to restore equality and reclaim civil liberties is now.” Deemar previously sued the district in federal court, but a the case last year, ruling that the teacher didn’t experience a hostile environment.

• , executive director of the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, which opposes “identity-based practices.” she was “thrilled” that OCR opened an investigation into the Tumwater School District in Washington state. The organization complained on behalf of a 15-year-old female basketball player who refused to participate in a game against an opposing team with a transgender player. The Tumwater district, according to the complaint, also investigated the student for bullying and harassment because she spoke out against the student playing. 

• , vice president of the Native American Guardians Association. The North Dakota-based organization opposes New York’s ban on Native American mascots in sports. The group, along with President Trump and McMahon, took the side of Massapequa High School in its dispute with the state over using the name Chiefs. McMahon has since referred the complaint to the Department of Justice. “We call on federal and state leaders to help us defend these dwindling expressions of our presence and contributions,” Black Cloud said in the department’s press release. 

Julie Hartman, a department spokeswoman, defended the inclusion of advocates in press statements. She said the agency “welcomes support from — and has often worked with — outside groups who want to advocate for students and families and help those who believe that their civil rights have been violated.”

The department, she said, has a “responsibility to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not sponsoring practices that violate” federal laws. According to department records, OCR investigated complaints from multiple advocacy organizations under former Secretary Cardona, including Defending Education. 

Under Biden, OCR opened a dozen based on Defending Education’s complaints.

In one 2023 case, the group complained that the Ashland, Oregon, school district offered exclusive, race-based affinity groups for students. When the Office for Civil Rights looked into , the district that the groups are open to all students and OCR closed the case. 

Advocates frequently issue their own press releases about complaints they want OCR to resolve. Some don’t see a problem with McMahon featuring them in official statements as well and say it’s a matter of transparency. 

“These groups often have expertise in specific areas and connections to affected communities that help them spot problems government agencies might miss,” said Harris, with the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism.

Quoting advocates “can foster trust by humanizing issues,” said Black Cloud. 

‘What letter?’

In some cases, the advocates commenting are more clued into where an investigation is headed than districts and even OCR itself. 

In one example, the department in March notified the Deerfield Public Schools, north of Chicago, that it was the subject of a probe over complaints about transgender athletes using girls’ locker rooms. The letter came the same day OCR officials issued , said Cathy Kedjidjian, the district’s chief communications officer. The government’s investigation also targets the Illinois Department of Education and the Chicago Public Schools.

“We didn’t know the investigation was coming,” she said.

In the release, Robert Eitel, president and co-founder of the Defense of Freedom Institute, thanked the department for taking steps to ensure “the bad actors comply with Title IX.” 

Deerfield officials, Kedjidjian said, have since “responded in full” to OCR’s questions. In an to the community, the district denied allegations that middle school girls had to change in a locker room with a trans girl present.

Jim Blew, who worked at the department during the first Trump administration and now leads the think tank with Eitel, said they “won’t be commenting for this story.”

Another announcement caught OCR’s attorneys off guard. On , a release stated that the department sent letters to 60 colleges and universities warning them to protect Jewish students on campus during antisemitic protests. 

“We found out from the same press release that you all did,” the attorney who was laid off over the weekend told The 74. She asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. When the letters went out, she said OCR attorneys received “confused and angry emails [from universities], like ‘What’s this letter?’ And we go, ‘What letter?’ ”

Actions like that, she said, can damage the “trust and goodwill” that investigators work to create with K-12 and higher education officials. 

“We’re the ones doing the face-to-face with the recipients [of those letters],” she said. With the closure of 10 regional OCR offices, as part of the administration’s plan to eliminate the agency, the staff is trying to reassure districts and give them “a sense that ‘We are still neutral, we will handle this case.’ ”

Trump administration tells 40 states to remove gender identity from sex ed or lose federal funds

The Trump administration is threatening to pull federal funding from 40 states for a sex education program aimed at vulnerable teens unless those states remove references in their curriculum to gender identity and transgender people.

, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said the action reflected the Trump administration’s “ongoing commitment to protecting children from attempts to indoctrinate them with delusional ideology.”

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The threat comes after California refused to change its curriculum last week and HHS terminated the state’s nearly $6 million-a-year grant.

The states that received notices to change their curriculum are: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

Withholding federal funds to punish states for teaching about gender identity is yet another way the Trump administration has sought to and advance .

Through and , the Trump administration is also seeking to and stop schools from letting trans kids use the bathroom or .

States will have 60 days to comply or risk losing their federal funds for the Personal Responsibility Education Program, or PREP.

PREP represents a small slice of sex ed nationwide, and . But it targets a particularly vulnerable group of teens and pre-teens who are at a higher risk for pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. In California, many of the 13,000 young people who participate each year live in foster care, are incarcerated, or are experiencing homelessness.

with the federal law that established PREP, because its materials included instruction about what it means to identify as transgender and that gender identity is not always synonymous with the sex someone is assigned at birth. The agency subsequently reviewed curriculum used by other states — .

parts of California’s curriculum “could encourage kids to contemplate mutilating their genitals, ‘altering their body … through hormone therapy,’ ‘adding or removing breast tissue,’ and ‘changing their name.’” This appears to refer to the possibility that students might socially transition or pursue gender-affirming medical care.

California officials told HHS that they wouldn’t change their materials because they were medically accurate, previously approved by the agency, and compliant with federal law — which is silent on whether PREP should teach about gender identity. State health officials also said that changing the curriculum could prompt public schools that use the same materials to drop them, because California law requires sex ed to include information about gender identity.

A spokesperson for the state’s public health department did not respond to Chalkbeat’s questions about how it planned to address the funding gap. California health officials told the Trump administration they reserved the right to challenge the funding termination, but they have yet to do so.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at .

While the matter focused on a student with disabilities, Trump officials appear to have homed in on it because it addressed a separate question central to the administration’s agenda: Do parents have a right to read staff emails about their children?

With the administration accusing districts of hiding students’ gender transitions from parents, experts say their answer is yes. 

“I don’t think there’s any question that they’re going to say [emails] should be available to parents,” said Amelia Vance, president of the nonprofit Public Interest Privacy Center. 

Education Secretary Linda McMahon signaled the department’s intention when she said districts have turned the “concept of privacy on its head to facilitate ideological indoctrination … without parental interference or even involvement.” 

In a message to the Wisconsin district, a department official acknowledged the issue’s importance to parents, students and school officials and said that districts can expect “guidance or regulations in the foreseeable future.” Contacted Aug. 14, department spokeswoman Madison Biedermann had no updates on timing. 

Enforcing the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which gives parents the right to inspect and amend their children’s education records, is a central focus of the administration’s parental rights agenda. The law was enacted 50 years ago, long before the advent of digital records. In the past, courts have sided with districts that argued emails were not education records, while parents say they should be treated just like report cards or schoolwork. Districts are likely to push back on being required to disclose internal messages about students, Vance said. Not only might a search eat up staff time, but “people say stupid things in emails.”

‘Numerous’ requests

Biedermann, the department spokeswoman, would not say why officials revived the 12-year-old complaint.

But in the March letter reminding states of their responsibilities under FERPA, McMahon said “schools are routinely hiding information about the mental and physical health of their students from parents.”

In a sign of its commitment to reshaping FERPA, the department hired Lindsay Burke in June as its deputy chief of staff for policy and programs. The author of the education section of , a vision for Trump’s second term, she contends that FERPA should offer parents the right to sue districts they think have violated their rights. Filing a complaint is currently the only option under the law. She also argues that students shouldn’t be able to change their gender identity at school without a parent’s permission.  

Like many districts faced with similar FERPA requests, Middleton Cross Plains, northwest of Madison, leaned on a that many experts feel is out of step with the digital age. It suggests that communications like email are not part of a student’s official record unless they are printed and physically placed there. 

FERPA was originally intended to target records “stored in file folders and cabinets,” said Andrew Manna, an Indiana attorney who represents districts. “There is no software that I am aware of that can sort through the digital storage of emails, so it is a ‘hide and seek’ approach to trying to find the email specific to a student.” 

Districts also say that combing through years of emails is too burdensome for staff and is likely to produce irrelevant communication. Vance suggested that argument might be outdated “at this moment in time with what AI is capable of.”

But while there might be more tech tools to conduct searches, there’s no guarantee AI is secure, said Stephanie Jones, an attorney with a firm representing districts in Illinois. 

Searching emails “is both an art and a science,” she said. As an example, a district she represents once had a request for emails related to a student with the last name Fridge. “You wouldn’t believe how many employees try to sell their college kid’s dorm room fridge through district email.”

In the Wisconsin case, Frank Miller, acting director of the Education Department’s privacy office, determined that the district was simply following long-standing legal precedents on FERPA when it declined to provide a parent with staff emails about her child. 

Superintendent Dana Monogue wasn’t in charge when the parent filed the complaint, but said she was pleased with the outcome.

“Like all districts, we receive numerous student record requests each year and this letter will provide useful guidance regarding our obligations,” Monogue said. 

But while he gave the district a pass, Miller had more to say. 

He referenced a second court ruling, from 2009, that often guides the way districts handle requests for emails. In , a federal district court in California said an email about a student is only part of the official record if the district “maintains” it in a central location.

Emails “have a fleeting nature” and “may be sent, received, read and deleted within moments,” the judge said in that case. 

The department, Miller said, rejects the Tulare interpretation, even though it’s been widely adopted by districts. Middleton Cross Plains officials told the parent that it used Infinite Campus, a “third-party, cloud-based” system to store emails, and said that emails that are “simply still on a server” are not education records.

A recent is another sign that the legal landscape could be shifting. The state Supreme Court ruled that emails stored in an online platform are still subject to FERPA.

‘Defies reality’

Jim Wheaton, an associate professor at William and Mary Law School, has little tolerance for districts that turn down parents’ requests for emails.

“Essentially, a school [or] district can simply decide not to physically put something in a file, and important, relevant discussions about a child suddenly fall outside FERPA,” said Wheaton, who runs a law clinic for students who intend to work as special education advocates. “The idea that files continue to be physical paper defies reality.”

As an alternative, some parents file public records requests to obtain emails, but districts often charge hefty fees to cover the staff time involved, and may heavily redact the documents before releasing them. Wheaton said public records laws are not an adequate FERPA substitute.

“I once received a letter asking me to prepay a quarter million dollars before they would do the search,” he said.

In 2024, Tamara Quick, a Virginia mother of five, asked the Spotsylvania school district for emails regarding her ninth-grader. Because of her dyslexia, Brennan attends a private school at the district’s expense.

When Quick learned teachers weren’t following her daughter’s special education plan, she hoped some email exchange between the district and the school might reveal why Brennan wasn’t being challenged in reading and spelling. 

“Any information you have about my kids, I have a right to see,” she said. 

Instead, the district said it had not “maintained” any communications with the girl’s teachers and, therefore, had “no education records responsive” to her request. Quick ultimately took the district to court, saying she couldn’t get the emails through the Virginia Freedom of Information Act either. 

In court records, the district said she never filed a formal request. An attorney for the district said officials “make every effort” to produce the records parents want, but “do not have time for games.”

The district eventually offered to look for emails for Quick and give her a cost estimate. But she didn’t think she should have to pay. Under the Individuals with Disabilities Act, parents have a their children’s records before a meeting to discuss special education services. 

She’s paying anyway. To this date, she’s spent over $30,000 on her case, withdrawing funds from a retirement account.

“Obviously it would have been cheaper for me to say, ‘OK, I’ll pay $2,000 for you to search for these emails,’ but that would be me agreeing that was appropriate,” she said.

‘Very negative things’

Parents may have multiple reasons for requesting staff emails, but McMahon’s March letter about privacy focused primarily on gender issues. Schools, she said, “promote and enable the transitioning of minor children, regardless of their mental state or their vulnerabilities.”

That’s what worried Amber Lavinge, a Maine parent, when she sought emails between staff members in the Great Salt Bay Community School district. It was late 2022 and she had just learned that a school social worker had given her 13-year-old daughter a chest binder to support a gender transition. But the district didn’t provide what she was looking for, said Adam Shelton, an attorney with the libertarian Goldwater Institute, which is handling her against the district. 

“She had a lot of questions and was just trying to understand what was going on,” he said. While the case, pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, doesn’t focus on emails or student records, he said he has a hard time understanding how any form of communication pertaining to a student wouldn’t constitute an education record. “Schools exist for the sole purpose of educating children.” 

Narrowing down which emails to release might be tricky, but Matt Cohen, a civil rights attorney in Chicago, said there are other reasons why districts avoid it.

“Sometimes teachers or administrators say very negative things about a child or the parents in the email that they’re not saying publicly,” he said. “It helps to establish that there is actual animus or discrimination going on.”

Jones, the other Illinois attorney, agrees that there can be a “reputational cost” for districts if they have to release embarrassing emails. That’s why she advises district staff to avoid “watercooler conversations” in emails — something many more are likely to take seriously if they know parents might read what they write, Jones said. 

“It has to pass the grandma test,” she said. “If you don’t want your grandma reading it, then don’t put it in an email.”

The landscape for LGBTQ+ students in many states is becoming increasingly hostile. As of late February 2025, lawmakers in 48 states had introduced some seeking to roll back rights or legal protections for transgender people. Last year’s entire legislative session saw a total of 641 such measures, indicating an in bills targeting the LGBTQ+ community.

These proposed laws encompass a range of restrictions, including bans on participation by transgender students in sports teams that align with their gender identity; restrictions on gender-affirming medical treatments such as hormone therapy and puberty blockers for transgender minors; measures that deny or complicate the legal recognition of transgender individuals’ gender identities; and policies that require schools to inform parents if a student identifies as LGBTQ+, potentially exposing young people to unsupportive or hostile environments at home.

The stakes are high. According to The Trevor Project’s 2022 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health, LGBTQ+ youth in affirming schools reported significantly than those in non-affirming environments. A separate study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health demonstrated that the presence of gay-straight alliances in schools was associated with among both LGBTQ+ and heterosexual students.

Despite these clear benefits, the wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation threatens to undermine the progress that has been made. These policies don’t merely restrict; they harm. LGBTQ+ youth already face disproportionate rates of bullying, mental health challenges and social isolation. Limiting affirming spaces and discussions only compounds these challenges, leaving vulnerable students with fewer resources and less hope.

Research is unequivocal about the importance of inclusive environments. Students in supportive schools have better academic outcomes, improved mental health and lower rates of substance abuse. A study by GLSEN found that LGBTQ+ students in schools with comprehensive policies feel , experience less victimization, and have a greater sense of belonging. have also that LGBTQ+ students in schools with anti-bullying policies that specifically mention sexual orientation or gender identity reported less homophobic victimization and greater psychosocial adjustment over time than students in schools without such policies.

Creating these inclusive environments isn’t just beneficial for LGBTQ+ students — it enriches the educational experience for all. It teaches empathy, broadens perspectives and prepares students for a diverse world. The skills learned in an inclusive environment — respect for differences, effective communication and conflict resolution — are invaluable in any future career or personal relationship. And schools that implement these measures report better outcomes for all students.

As the socio-political climate becomes increasingly charged, it’s vital for schools to stand as beacons of safety and acceptance. They must adopt and enforce inclusive policies, provide professional development for staff on LGBTQ+ issues and support gay-straight alliances and similar student organizations. Parents and community members can play a crucial role by advocating for these measures and holding schools accountable for their implementation.

This is a call to action: to ensure that every student, regardless of identity, feels seen, heard and valued. The time to act is now. Young people are owed safe spaces where they can thrive, free from fear and filled with the promise of a brighter, more inclusive future. This mission also intersects with broader struggles for equity and justice across other marginalized identities, including racial, ethnic and socio-economic groups. 

To create these inclusive spaces, especially in the face of such restrictive legislation, GLSEN offers these resources and recommendations:

• Implement comprehensive anti-bullying and anti-discrimination policies that explicitly protect LGBTQ+ students.
  
• Provide professional development for staff on LGBTQ+ issues and creating inclusive classrooms.
  
• Support student-led clubs like gay-straight alliances.
  
• Include LGBTQ+ history and perspectives in the curriculum, where possible.
  
• Display visible signs of support, such as Safe Space stickers or posters.

School is where young people spend most of their waking hours. Students worrying about bullying or hiding their true self can’t fully engage in learning. That’s why focusing on academics alone overlooks the critical role that a sense of belonging and safety plays in a student’s ability to learn. But when students feel supported and accepted for who they are, their academic and personal development flourishes. 

How can educators and parents support this crucial cause? Start conversations in local communities about the importance of inclusivity by organizing public forums or joining school board meetings to advocate for inclusive policies. Collaborate with local organizations to raise awareness and foster dialogue on LGBTQ+ issues. Attend school board meetings and advocate for comprehensive policies. Support organizations like GLSEN, that provide resources and training. Seek out (demand!) professional development opportunities to better support your LGBTQ+ students.

The need for LGBTQ+ inclusive school environments is more urgent than ever. In the face of discriminatory legislation, schools can and must be a beacon of hope and acceptance. Creating these safe spaces not only improves outcomes for LGBTQ+ youth — it fosters a broader cultural and social understanding in schools, benefiting all students by cultivating empathy and mutual respect.

Five days after President Donald Trump issued a seeking to limit how schools support gender nonconforming students and teach about racism, New York City’s educational leaders have yet to issue a systemwide public response, sparking concerns from some parents and educators.

The targeting “radical indoctrination” threatens to withhold federal funding from schools that support students in gender transitions or that teach about the prevalence of racism in American life.

Some have questioned whether the order is lawful or enforceable, given the significant power of states and localities to control their own curriculum. Several and have already sent out communications to families and educators pushing back on the order.

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New York’s state Education Department issued a statement Monday sent to school staffers saying the executive order is “antithetical” to the U.S. Congress’ history of protecting vulnerable students through legislation. “We denounce the intolerant rhetoric of these orders,” the statement continued. “Our children cannot thrive in an environment of chaos; they need steady and stable leadership that we will endeavor to provide.”

But the response in the nation’s largest district — long a national leader in efforts to teach about racial inequity and support gender nonconforming students — has so far been more muted. The city Education Department has not sent any systemwide communication to families or educators, and it hasn’t issued specific guidance for administrators about the executive order, according to families and school staff.

Brooklyn mom Eliza Hittman, whose fifth-grader identifies as nonbinary, said she’s in multiple parent chats where there is a “tremendous amount of agitation” over the lack of communication from administrators.

“The silence is alarming,” Hittman said.

Asked at two recent parent town halls what the city is doing to protect LGBTQ+ students, New York City schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos reaffirmed that city schools do not tolerate any kind of hate.

“Our schools are expected to be safe spaces,” she said Monday at a town hall for District 30 in Queens.

Mark Rampersant, the chief of safety and prevention partnerships, added that New York City is one of the only school districts that has hired someone overseeing ways to foster inclusion for LGBTQ students. “Regardless of what happens on the top, we remain committed to ensuring the physical and well-being of every single one of our students,” he said.

But some parents and educators said the Education Department has not circulated that message widely enough at a time when fear is spreading quickly.

“What we need from our city leadership is … to give clarity and certainty and comfort in this time of chaos,” said Justin Krebs, the parent of a nonbinary child in Brooklyn’s District 15. “Instead, we’re hearing nothing from city leadership on this front.” He added that the city periodically sends notices to all families and he would “love to get that email” reiterating the city’s protections for LGBTQ+ students.

Education Department spokesperson Nicole Bronwstein didn’t say whether the agency plans to issue a systemwide statement, but said, “We are evaluating the Executive Order to determine if it will have any impact on New York City Public Schools.”

Brownstein said, “we remain steadfast in our commitment to fostering a safe, inclusive, and affirming environment where every student can thrive.” She added that the Education Department will ensure ”our school environment remains free from harassment, intimidation, and/or bullying, and free from discrimination of any kind.”

When asked whether she was concerned about the potential loss of federal funding, Aviles-Ramos said at a town hall last week, “We do not know what lies ahead in terms of federal funding,” which makes up about $2 billion of the Education Department’s annual budget.

Some parents and teachers want stronger message of support

Jo Macellaro, a Bronx teacher who identifies as nonbinary, said the lack of a clear public statement from the city sends educators “the message … that we don’t have your back, we’re not going to protect you.”

Absent that assurance, some teachers may decide they can’t take the risk of violating the executive order, Macellaro added. The Parent-Teacher Association from P.S. 139, a Brooklyn elementary school, wrote in a Monday letter to Aviles-Ramos that it’s “disconcerting that we have not received any sort of statement from you or other city or state leadership about this.”

Some parents suspect the city Education Department’s response is constrained by Mayor Eric Adams, who was indicted last fall on federal corruption charges. Trump mayor, and the U.S Department of Justice is reportedly , who has . Adams has pleaded not guilty to the federal charges.

Gavin Healy, a Manhattan parent and member of the Community Education Council in District 2, said he thinks Adams’ political situation may be limiting the Education Department’s ability to respond. “I think doing what’s right for the students is hostage to the mayor’s legal issues and courting of the Trump administration.”

Existing policies offer strong protection for transgender students

The city Education Department’s , which , instructs staff to address students by their preferred pronouns at school. It gives schools some discretion not to inform parents when a student is socially transitioning in cases where a family doesn’t accept their gender identity and allows students to use bathrooms and join sports teams that are consistent with their gender identities.

When Manhattan’s community education council in District 2 passed a resolution last year urging the city to reconsider its sports policy for transgender students, then-Chancellor David Banks as “despicable” and reaffirmed the city’s policy.

Krebs, the Brooklyn parent of a nonbinary student, said he’s not worried about his own child’s school. But in a system this large, without clear instructions from city leadership, some schools and educators might be reluctant to run afoul of the executive order, he said. Krebs drew an analogy to reports that NYU’s Langone Hospital for some patients following a separate executive order banning the practice for people under age 19.

Some schools may “start complying in advance, the same way NYU Langone has,” he said, “when a school says, ‘You know what, to be on the safe side, we’re going to stop calling kids by their pronouns.’”

Johanna Miller, director of the education policy center at the New York Civil Liberties Union, noted that Trump’s executive order charges federal agencies with developing an enforcement plan, and it’s hard to say for sure how the order would be carried out until that happens. The executive order specifically mentions practices like using students’ preferred pronouns, referring to students as nonbinary, and allowing them to use bathrooms aligned with their gender identities as ones that may run afoul of the order. It also targets concepts like white privilege and unconscious bias.

But Miller said that state laws preventing bullying and harassment remain on the books.

“If an educator in New York State reads this executive order from Trump and decides on their own that they’re not going to comply with New York laws, they would be legally liable in that situation for not complying with the law,” she said.

Taking matters into their own hands

Some parent leaders are trying to push the city to issue a more forceful response.

Faraji Hannah-Jones, a member of the Community Education Council for District 13, told Aviles-Ramos at a town hall last week that he doesn’t “think that this office is ready for the shitstorm that is coming.

“I want to know, does your office have a backbone on these issues?” he asked.

Aviles-Ramos responded it’s “very sad to hear there’s a lack of faith in this administration.” She pointed to its work developing new curriculum including Black studies curriculum, for example.

Reached by phone Monday, Hannah-Jones said he’s been sounding the alarm about Trump’s education plans for months and has gotten little response from city officials. The Education Department is more “concerned about bringing us in a back room to have a conversation than having one in public,” he added.

Kaliris Salas-Ramirez, a parent in East Harlem and former member of the Panel for Educational Policy, an oversight panel for the city Education Department, drafted a mock resolution opposing the executive order that she hopes local Community Education Councils will modify and adopt.

“It’s our time to raise our voices,” she said.

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at . 

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed six bills the Legislature passed during this week’s special session — including a resolution that bans government officers from complying with a Title IX update that prohibits discrimination based on gender identity.

Wednesday to approve two resolutions — and — declaring they wouldn’t follow the federal directive that extends Title IX protections to transgender students and would allow them to participate on sports teams and use bathrooms and facilities of the gender they identify with.

With the signature, Utah is putting into action the recently enacted , which allows the state to not comply with federal policies in cases lawmakers consider “overreach.”

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During the debate, lawmakers said the new Title IX rules, set to become effective in August, are in conflict with state laws that restrict transgender people from using bathrooms and locker rooms of the gender they identify with. Also with , which bans transgender students from joining sports teams of their gender identity, among other harassment and abortion policies.

Back in 2022, Cox had vetoed HB11, citing “fundamental flaws” and criticizing a last-hour change that allowed a complete ban of transgender high school and middle school students in the sports teams of the gender they align with.

“I must admit, I am not an expert on transgenderism. I struggle to understand so much of it and the science is conflicting. When in doubt however, I always try to err on the side of kindness, mercy and compassion,” Cox said in a to the Legislature’s leadership. “I also try to get proximate and I am learning so much from our transgender community. They are great kids who face enormous struggles.”

However, the Legislature that veto.

Cox didn’t immediately comment on why he signed the resolutions Friday.

This January, Cox HB257, which restricts transgender people from accessing bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity in government-owned facilities, and issued a one-line statement saying “we want public facilities that are safe and accommodating for everyone and this bill increases privacy protections for all.”

Rep. Kera Birkland, R-Morgan, who sponsored HCR301, the resolution to disregard the new Title IX policies — apart from HB11 and HB257 — that she hopes the signature leads other states to take similar measures.

“Hopefully this all gets us one step closer to congressional action that protects and preserves women’s sports,” Birkeland wrote.

Because of the resolution and the Utah Constitutional Sovereignty Act, the order to not comply with the federal law extends to K-12 schools and higher education, she explained.

“Utah will follow state law and not an unconstitutional rule from unelected bureaucrats under the Biden Administration,” she added in her post.

HJR301, a joint resolution with the same goal as HCR301, didn’t need Cox’s signature.

Apart from those items, Cox signed easing the terms of a controversial bill that would keep the Intermountain Power Plant’s coal generators running past its planned retirement date, an agreement that the Intermountain Power Agency said it wouldn’t oppose.

The governor also signed amendments to the Utah code related to the participation of exchange students in the statewide online education program and other actions “countering federal overreach on public lands,” according to the session’s , among other changes.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Utah News Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor McKenzie Romero for questions: info@utahnewsdispatch.com. Follow Utah News Dispatch on and .

In June 2023, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts shared with the public a draft of a new framework that will guide .

The that specify expectations for what Massachusetts students learn about sex in schools was 24 years ago, when most U.S. homes were not yet internet-connected.

The new guidelines are part of a larger framework that addresses many aspects of health, including physical education, nutrition and hygiene. They include important improvements over the 1999 version, including standards that pertain to the well-being of gender and sexual minority populations. That’s noteworthy, given that other U.S. states have recently .

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The draft Massachusetts framework has been in development since 2018 but is not yet final. After a public comment period, which is open until Aug. 28, the framework is subject to approval by the commonwealth’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and could be adopted as early as the fall of 2023.

I’m a public health researcher who . I have co-developed and tested a new sex education module for high school students in Massachusetts with funding from the National Institutes of Health, so I read the part of the framework that deals with sex education with great interest.

I’ll provide some more detail on the Massachusetts framework below, but first it is important to understand the state of sex education in the U.S.

Sex education and pornography

Many young people in the U.S are not getting the sex education that they need. Currently, only 38 U.S. states and the District of Columbia mandate any kind of sex education. As a result, it isn’t surprising that of U.S. adolescents say that they have received information about where to get birth control before having heterosexual intercourse for the first time. And the racial disparities are concerning: Black and Hispanic teens are less likely than white teens to receive education about prevention of sexually transmitted infections or HIV, or .

So where do teenagers and young adults go to get information about sex, in the absence of comprehensive sex education at school?

According to a nationally representative , young adults in the U.S. are more likely to turn to pornography than to their friends, parents, doctors or any other source. That’s a problem, because pornography isn’t designed to relay medically accurate or helpful information about sex — it’s designed to get clicks or likes, make money and entertain the viewer.

Massachusetts is not one of the states that mandates sex education. However, all public schools to teach health education. As a local control state, Massachusetts issues frameworks and guidance and allows local school districts boards to decide how to implement them. This approach will continue with the new framework once adopted.

Importantly, the new Massachusetts framework recognizes the prevalence of pornography, and it addresses other critical sex education topics for the modern world.

For example, the framework specifies that in grades 6 to 8, adolescents should learn about laws related to sexual digital imagery. This is important because otherwise they may not realize that possessing or sending nude digital photos of people younger than 18 years old is a crime even if the sender is also a minor.

The framework also suggests that adolescents should be able to analyze similarities and differences between friendships, romantic relationships and sexual relationships, and discuss various ways to show affection within each. It expects them to be able to define sexual consent and describe factors, such as drug and alcohol use, that can influence capacity to give consent. It recommends teaching strategies to help students recognize when someone is grooming or recruiting a young person for possible commercial sexual exploitation like human trafficking.

While these points are strong, I would like to see a recommendation that schools tell youth that mainstream online pornography is not a good source of information about sexual behavior.

A series of online games

Our research team, which includes , and BU , has been working on new sex education teaching materials for Massachusetts high schools for . As researchers, we endeavored to create an online sex education module that reflected the best available evidence and feedback that we got from young people.

Our teaching materials are in the form of short, online games that students engage with on their own time, and then come back to the classroom to discuss. One of the games has students order the effectiveness of 11 different contraceptive methods. Another provides them with information about ways pornography can provide unhelpful expectations about sex and sexuality. A third game invites students to act as an advice columnist to solve relationship problems for peers.

When we tested the materials with 54 teens ages 14-18 years old in Massachusetts in 2022, we found a statistically significant positive impact on a range of outcomes, from increased condom use to fewer experiences of abuse by a dating partner. We will partner with a number of Massachusetts high schools in the next several years to continue testing the impact of our module.

Reading the framework

In reading the new Massachusetts guidelines, our team noted several strengths of its approach.

First, the framework is evidence-based. In other words, the recommendations reflect the latest and best available research about how adolescents develop, learn and behave with regard to sex and sexuality.

Second, the guidance is developmentally and age-appropriate, with different recommendations for different grade levels, and with careful attention to diverse perspectives, cultural differences, and the importance of delivering material in a way that would not traumatize students.

Third, the framework encourages youths’ critical thinking, reasoning, decision-making and problem-solving.

It is my hope that Massachusetts will strengthen the guidance on pornography. If it does, the new framework will be well positioned to serve as a national model.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

At issue is an ongoing effort from the DeSantis administration to dictate how race and other topics are discussed in schools, as well as an increasing effort to limit the freedom of private businesses to make decisions for their companies.

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Rep. Bryan Avila, a Republican who represents part of Miami-Dade County and the sponsor of HB 7, says that the legislation is an affirmation that people will not be judged by characteristics such as race or sex.

“This bill makes it clear, that in Florida, people will be judged as individuals — by their words, their characters, and their actions,” Avila said at a Wednesday House Judiciary Committee meeting. The bill passed 14 to 7 (with one vote missing), and with Democrats in opposition.

“This bill cripples the ability for teachers to teach effectively,” said Rep. Dianne Hart, who represents part of Hillsborough County, said at the Wednesday meeting.

“Every teacher I’ve ever encountered, does their job from not only an academic standpoint, but from a personal one,” Hart said. It is their personal experiences that they use to make the curriculum come alive for their students. Even more so for the Black and Brown students on the topic of race and discrimination.”

HB 7 expands the Florida Civil Rights Act of 1992, according to the bill analysis, which “secures for all individuals within the state freedom from discrimination because of race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy, national origin, age, handicap, or marital status.”

The bill affects areas of education and employment, saying that individuals should not be subjected to training or materials that espouse principles such as:

• “Members of one race, color, national origin, or sex are morally superior to members of another race, color, national origin, or sex.”
• “A person, by virtue of his or her race, color, national origin, or sex is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”
• “A person’s moral character or status as either privileged or oppressed is necessarily determined by his or her race, color, national origin, or sex.”
• “A person, by virtue of his or her race, color, national origin, or sex bears responsibility for, or should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of, actions committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, national origin, or sex.”
• “A person should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race, color, national origin, or sex.”

These principles would also apply to students and school employees under the Florida Educational Equity Act, should the bill become law. There is a  also moving through the 2022 legislative session.

“Those are principles that I think each and everyone of us — whether you’re a Democrat, whether you’re a Republican, whether you’re an Independent — I think everyone would agree that when you look at those principles, no one would disagree with any one of those principles,” Avila said at the Wednesday committee meeting.

Ben Diamond, a Democrat who represents part of Pinellas County, is opposed to the bill.

“What we’re prepared to do is to say that if a business is engaged in the perfectly lawful exercise of diversity training, and someone in the business feels a sense of guilt or sense of anguish or has some emotional reaction to that, they can sue. How is this helping our businesses in our state?” Diamond said.

Much of the debate and public testimony centered around the bill’s effect on schools and whether it would curtail frank discussions about United States history and race.

Aliva said that the bill does not “ban the teaching of historical facts about slavery, about sexism, about racial oppression, racial segregation, or racial discrimination.”

But many of the Democratic lawmakers disagreed.

At issue is an ongoing effort to dictate how race and other topics are discussed in classrooms.

In June, the Florida State Board of Education approved a  in classrooms, claiming that the theory “distorts historical events” and is “inconsistent” with the state board’s approved standards. The new rule also banned materials from The New York Times’ “1619 project,” which focuses the establishment of the United States from perspective of Black people.

Rep. Hart brought up this attack on Critical Race Theory in debate on HB 7 Wednesday.

“Critical Race Theory is not even taught in K-12 schools. It’s, of course, used in law schools to increase understanding of the implication of laws. So the question becomes: What is this really about?”

Ida Eskamani, representing the group Florida Rising and Florida Immigrant Coalition, said during public testimony:

“This legislation is a part of a dangerous and shameful nationwide agenda to censor discussions of race and gender equality in the classrooms and the workplace.”

“These bills don’t just set back progress this nation has made in addressing racism and sexism, they also rob young people of a fact-based education and blatantly suppresses speech about race, gender, and our collective history,” she continued.

She is the sister of Democrat Rep. Anna Eskamani of Orlando.  She noted that a school district in Central Florida recently canceled a professor’s lecture on civil rights “because these policies are creating a climate of fear among historians.”

According to the Orlando Sentinel from earlier this week: “A Flagler College history professor planned to spend an hour Saturday teaching Osceola County teachers about the civil rights movement, his area of expertise.

But supporters of these initiatives to limit how race is discussed in classrooms and in the workplace claim that certain teaching and materials espouse that a person’s race or sex determine a person’s character.

House Speaker Chris Sprowls, a Republican who represents part of Pinellas County, said in a written statement Wednesday:

“These movements have tried to hijack the important conversation about race and use it as a pretext to attack institutions– ranging from capitalism to the very idea of objective truth in the hard sciences.”

Sprowls continued: “They want to use the sins of the past to shut down dissent in the present. HB 7 ensures Florida’s workplaces and schools are places where we can have healthy dialogues about race or diversity without losing sight that we are all, first and foremost, unique individuals.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Diane Rado for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on and .

A group of girls from Berkeley High School will go before a federal judge in California this Thursday to argue that former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos left victims of sexual assault or harassment with fewer protections and shielded those accused of misconduct.

The state of Texas, led by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, has tried to join the case as a defendant, arguing President Joe Biden’s justice department won’t provide a “robust defense” of the DeVos’s interpretation of the rule, known as Title IX, because it has “expressed open hostility to the provisions.”

As it happens, the San Francisco court is hearing the case just as Biden’s education department launches a weeklong public comment period on the future of Title IX — a key step in the administration’s promise to rewrite the controversial rule.

But the process this time is more than just a chance for Democrats to wipe away what DeVos said would be her . The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2020 protecting gay and transgender employees against discrimination — and the justice department’s that the opinion extends to schools — shows that the policy landscape has grown more complicated than it was even in 2017.

“The stakes have always been high,” said Liz King, the senior program director for education at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “This is a question of whether or not students will have access to an education free from discrimination.”

The White House is signalling the importance it attaches to the measure by the extensive time it is granting for public input and by its intention to bring back an expert hand who was instrumental in writing guidance that held colleges responsible for addressing on-campus sexual violence.

An ‘effort in public engagement’

While she’s not yet been confirmed, Catherine Lhamon is poised to return to her former position as the education department’s assistant secretary for civil rights. Lhamon has briefly served as deputy director for racial justice and equity on the White House Domestic Policy Council. Her nomination “shows how serious the Biden administration is taking civil rights,” said Shiwali Patel, senior counsel with the National Women’s Law Center.

The especially wants to hear this week about discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, according to the notice.

Civil rights attorney Seth Galanter, with the National Center for Youth Law, called this week’s hearing “an extraordinary effort in public engagement.”

“As far as I know, there’s not been public hearings held around Title IX since the 1970s, when the department was first issuing regulations,” said Galanter, who is representing the Berkeley students. “It will be a great opportunity for people who don’t normally participate in the notice-and-comment process to have their voices heard directly by the leadership of the department.”

DeVos held one day of to hear from victims of sexual harassment and assault and from men’s rights groups that argued some students had been being falsely accused of misconduct.

On Zoom ‘with a harasser’

Before DeVos finalized the current rule, over 124,000 public comments were submitted, with many in opposition. Multiple lawsuits — including one involving and the District of Columbia — were filed in protest.

In the Berkeley students’ case, the complaint said victims are often assigned to the same classrooms as the students who sexually assaulted them off campus and that remote learning hasn’t alleviated the trauma that some victims experience.

“Even when learning takes place primarily online, as it does this school year due to COVID-19, victims are required to be in small video ‘breakout rooms’ with their harasser,” according to the complaint.

The justice department said Texas has no “claim or defense” in the Berkeley case. The state made the same argument in opposing the DeVos rule in Massachusetts, but a federal judge denied the motion. The state, however, successfully intervened in the multi-state case, now on hold as the administration works to rewrite the regulation.

Others don’t want to see the DeVos rule torn down because they say it recognizes the rights of those unfairly accused of sexual misconduct.

Reversing the rule could “once again force schools to deprive accused students and faculty of constitutionally guaranteed safeguards like the right to confront the evidence used against them,” said Caleb Kruckenberg, an attorney with the New Civil Liberties Alliance. He added that despite multiple federal courts upholding due process in campus disciplinary hearings, “the department seems poised to ignore those bedrock constitutional principles.”

As Kruckenberg noted, federal courts in recent years have shown greater deference toward the accused, agreeing that some colleges demonstrated against males when handling complaints. But Patel, whose organization is representing plaintiffs in the Massachusetts case, said institutions can protect due process rights while still providing fairness to victims.

“Sexual harassment is very pervasive in K-12 schools,” she said, “and rather than requiring schools to do more reporting, the DeVos changes swept sex harassment under the rug.”

released last year showed incidents of sexual violence in K-12 schools increased by more than half between the 2015-16 and 2017-18 school years, and the number of rapes or attempted rapes increased from almost 400 to nearly 800.

The DeVos rule limited what counts as sexual misconduct under Title IX. School officials, for example, are no longer obligated to investigate incidents that occur , but with virtual school, that distinction is less clear. In a recently issued , the department indicated that schools must investigate complaints of discrimination or harassment that occur during remote learning.

Disagreement over Title IX is one reason why Congress didn’t reauthorize the Higher Education Act while former Sen. Lamar Alexander chaired the education committee, leaving both the Trump and Biden administrations to implement the policy through regulation. That means if a Republican administration returns to the White House in four years, the pendulum could swing back the other way.

The back-and-forth over the policy probably means that no matter what happens, the issue is destined to continue to play out in court.

“We’ll have to wait and see what the Biden administration does,” said Kenneth Marcus, who led the Office for Civil Rights under DeVos. “But if they repeal the Trump Title IX regulations and replace it with something that looks more like the Obama rules, then we will certainly see this either struck down by the courts or reversed as soon as Republicans regain control.”

‘A different landscape’

The comment period is also taking place as debate continues to escalate over whether transgender girls should be allowed to compete against biological girls in high school and college sports — a question Title IX didn’t previously address.

“This is a different landscape than it was in 2016,” when President Donald Trump was elected, said Sasha Buckert, a senior attorney with Lambda Legal, a civil rights organization focusing on LGBTQ issues. “The court has weighed in.”

The day he took office, President Joe Biden issued an regarding the U.S. Supreme Court’s workplace discrimination ruling in , stating, “Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, locker room or school sports.”

But at least 20 states are considering or have already passed legislation banning students born biologically male from competing against females. And the issue has sparked heated exchanges between Republicans and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona the two times he’s appeared before Congress.

“We can create transgender leagues, I don’t mind,” Congressman Andy Harris of Maryland told Cardona during an appropriations on the federal budget in early May. He added that his daughter is an NCAA all-American athlete, who in no way “could compete against biological males,” and that he was disappointed in Cardona’s stance on the issue.

The NCAA isn’t considering separate leagues, but does testosterone suppression treatment for transgender women to compete in women’s sports at the college level. High school athletic associations began allowing trans girls to compete in events for girls over , and some experts argue there’s of trans women dominating women’s sports.

Cardona hasn’t veered from the firm position he took during his confirmation hearing. “Transgender students deserve every opportunity to participate in all school activities,” he told Harris.

Republicans have introduced the , which would only define sex under Title IX as those born male or female, not gender identity. But the House has already passed , which would extend civil rights protections in housing, education and employment to LGBTQ people and mostly clarifies what the courts have already decided, Buckert said.

If passed, the bill “would hopefully prevent all of these lawsuits and would prevent [the Supreme Court] from creating some kind of horrific carve-out in Title IX,” she said, adding she’s concerned Congress could say “discrimination against transgender people in general is against the law, but not in athletics.”