WASHINGTON – The Education Department said Monday it has terminated agreements with five school districts and a college aimed at upholding protections for transgender students, backing away from requirements negotiated by previous administrations that took a different interpretation of civil rights.
The decision removes the federal obligations for the schools to keep up measures such as faculty training on abiding by a student’s preferred name and pronouns and allowing students to use bathrooms that align with their gender identity.
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One of the school systems, Delaware Valley School District in rural eastern Pennsylvania, received notice of the change from the Trump administration in February and has since voted to roll back its antidiscrimination protections for transgender students.
The other affected districts are Cape Henlopen School District in Delaware, Fife School District in Washington, and La Mesa-Spring Valley School District, Sacramento City Unified and Taft College in California.
Under the Biden and Obama administrations, the department interpreted Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in education, to include protections for transgender and gay students.
The Trump administration has penalized schools that have made efforts to accommodate students based on their gender identity. It has filed lawsuits in California and Minnesota over state policies permitting transgender students to participate in interscholastic sports, and opened civil rights investigations into schools and universities over their policies on transgender students.
Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said the action reflects the administration’s efforts to keep transgender students from participating in girls’ and women’s sports teams and accessing shared locker rooms.
“Today, the Trump Administration is removing the unnecessary and unlawful burdens that prior Administrations imposed on schools in its relentless pursuit of a radical transgender agenda,” she said in a written statement.
Rescinding civil rights agreements is an unusual step, but one the Trump administration has taken before on education issues. Last year, the Education Department terminated one agreement involving books removed from a school library in Georgia, and another targeting harsh discipline and unequal education opportunities for Native students in the Rapid City Area School District in South Dakota.
The rescission of the agreements would mean a step back from protecting vulnerable students in schools, said Shiwali Patel, senior director of education justice at the National Women’s Law Center.
“This is part of the Trump administration’s assault on education and assault on those who are most vulnerable to experiencing discrimination and harassment, including trans students,” Patel said. “They’ve made their intention very clear in wanting to erase protections for trans people.”
Under a settlement the Delaware Valley School District reached with the Obama administration, the district was required to shield transgender students from discrimination and to permit students to use bathrooms that aligned with their gender identity.
In February, the Trump administration sent the district a letter saying it was rescinding the settlement. The administration went further, requiring the district to roll back antidiscrimination protections for transgender students.
The school board voted in late March to change its transgender student policies to abide by the Trump administration’s demands.
Since the day he returned to the White House more than a year ago, Trump and his administration have aimed at the rights of transgender people in several ways — and not just in schools.
He has tried to end participation of transgender women and girls in women’s and girls' sports competitions and has sued states that don’t comply. He’s also blocked transgender and nonbinary people from choosing the sex markers on passports. His administration has also tried to stop those under 19 from receiving gender-affirming medical care. ___
Associated Press writers Jocelyn Gecker in San Francisco, Moriah Balingit in Washington and Geoff Mulvihill in Haddonfield, New Jersey, contributed to this report.
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