DOJ sues Kansas school district over transgender student guidelines and parental consent

In what it called “a first-of-its-kind lawsuit,” the Justice Department has sued a school district in Kansas over its guidelines on student gender identity and assisting transgender students.

The lawsuit, filed Monday, is the latest escalation from the Trump administration targeting school districts for policies or guidelines to accommodate transgender students in academic settings.

The Justice Department said it was seeking to stop the Kansas City, Kansas, public school district from violating federal law by “facilitating secret ‘gender transitions’ for children at school without their parents’ knowledge or consent.”

“Parental rights are paramount in the operation of America’s public schools, and Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools does not know children better than their own parents,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in a statement. “The Department will not tolerate school districts playing fast and loose with federal law in the service of radical gender ideology.”

The complaint says district guidelines violated the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA) , which allow parents to view students’ educational records and threaten loss of federal funding for failing to comply.

The district is at risk of losing nearly $70 million in federal funding if it is found teachers or administrators withheld information related to a student’s gender identity, NBC News affiliate KSHB 41 reports .

According to the Justice Department complaint, the Kansas City district’s guidance says that a student or their parents should contact the school if a student is transgender or gender nonconforming and is seeking any related accommodations.

“If any staff member learns a student is transgender or gender non-conforming, that information should be relayed to the school principal without delay,” the guideline says, according to the complaint. “The school principal should discuss available accommodations and resources with the student or the student’s parent or legal guardian, including the availability of a planning meeting. If it becomes known that the student does not want the student’s parent or legal guardian included at this stage, that request will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.”

The guidelines say those requests will be evaluated by the executive director of Student Services & Family Support, the director of Student Support Programs, the executive director of Equity and Inclusion and the district’s attorney.

“When reviewing the request, the district will consider the student’s age, the student’s grade level, the student’s welfare based on the information available to the district at that time, and any other relevant information,” the guidelines say, according to the complaint.

The school district’s guidance also says that upon request, administrators will schedule a planning meeting to discuss a student’s preferred pronoun use and restroom and locker use.

The district for 21,000 students said in a statement to KSHB this week that it’s been in full cooperation with federal law and is “disappointed by the DOJ’s decision to file the lawsuit.”

Because the matter is now pending in federal court, district leaders said they would respond to the complaint through the appropriate legal channel and not issue additional public comments.

After the Justice Department threatened to sue the district in late July, KCKPS Superintendent Anna ‌Stubblefield told KSHB 41 that she could not recall an incident in which the district withheld such information from parents.

“It also is not policy, it is guidance,” Stubblefield said. “There’s nowhere in the guidance where we say ‘withhold information from parents.’ We have no reason or incentive to withhold information from parents about anything that they’re entitled to for their students.”

The lawsuit comes after the Justice Department in April said it determined that four school districts in Kansas were in violation of the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act.

The Trump administration has previously threatened to cut federal funding from school districts over policies regarding transgender students and gender identity, including in Maryland and Michigan.

In March, the Supreme Court barred California from enforcing state rules that restrict when schools can notify parents about students who come out as transgender and require teachers to use children’s preferred pronouns.

Lawyers for the state had argued that the policies were not as broad as the plaintiffs suggested.

“Currently, under California’s laws and constitutional provisions on privacy and antidiscrimination, schools may balance parental interests with students’ particular needs and circumstances, such as the risk of harm upon disclosure of the student’s gender identity without student consent,” they wrote at the time.

The rules “allow disclosure to parents in some circumstances and limit disclosure in others,” the lawyers said.