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 compla...