Trump DOJ gives school district 7-day ultimatum over student trans policy that keeps parents in the dark

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon demanded in a letter sent July 29 that a school district in Maryland stop hiding information about student gender transitions from parents or face litigation from the Justice Department.“By categorically withholding ‘(i)nformation about a student’s gender identity’ from parents except where ‘legally required,’ AACPS appears to have adopted a blanket, district-wide practice of nondisclosure untethered to FERPA’s enumerated exceptions … parents were denied access to their child’s full record, information was disclosed without parental consent, and the parents were denied a hearing to correct the record,” she wrote, aimed at the Anne Arundel County school system. “Comply with the law or face us in court,” Dhillon later added on X.The demand marks the Trump administration’s latest effort to challenge school policies that allow students to socially transition without their parents’ knowledge, testing whether federal education privacy law requires districts to disclose gender-identity records.Anne Arundel County now faces possible litigation — and potentially the loss of federal funding — unless it reverses the policy within seven days, escalating a national dispute over parental rights, a significant plank in the president’s policy agenda.The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) is designed to give parents the legal right to access their children’s educational records, which the Trump administration argues includes information related to changes in their gender identity.

The law has previously been used by the DOJ in attempts to overturn similar policies in Maine and California.LGBT advocates argue that nondisclosure for information linked to a child’s gender identity is important to preserving the safety of children growing up in non-affirming or abusive households.Social conservatives, meanwhile, take the position that schools don’t have the right to conceal informat...