After a new round of federal civil-rights enforcement, the U.S. Department of Education said it has ended agreements with five school districts and Taft College that it described as protections negotiated under prior administrations for transgender students. In a statement issued alongside the termination decision, the department said the step removes federal requirements that included training on how staff should address students and accommodations related to bathroom access.
The Education Department said the termination affects Delaware Valley School District in rural eastern Pennsylvania, Sacramento City Unified School District, Cape Henlopen School District in Delaware, Fife School District in Washington, and La Mesa-Spring Valley School District in California, as well as Taft College in California’s Central Valley. The department said the rescissions undo federal obligations it linked to earlier civil-rights agreements for transgender students.
The department also said it was returning to a different approach from the administrations of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, which, according to the Education Department, interpreted Title IX to cover protections for transgender and gay students. Under the agreements now terminated, the department said schools had obligations that included faculty training on how to address students by their preferred names and pronouns, along with the ability for students to use bathrooms that align with their gender identity.
Delaware Valley School District received notice of the change in February, according to the Education Department account, and the district’s school board voted in late March to alter its transgender student policies in line with the department’s demands. Sacramento City Unified School District, the department said, responded Monday that it “remains committed to the support of our LGBTQ+ students and staff.”
In her statement, the Education Department’s Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey tied the actions to the administration’s broader approach to transgender students. She said the department was removing “the unnecessary and unlawful burdens that prior Administrations imposed on schools in its relentless pursuit of a radical transgender agenda.”
The Education Department’s announcement also placed the terminations in a wider pattern of actions involving transgender students across the education system. The department said it has penalized schools that made efforts to accommodate students based on gender identity and that it has filed lawsuits in California and Minnesota over state policies that allow transgender students to participate in interscholastic sports. It also said it opened civil rights investigations into schools and universities over their transgender student policies.
The department’s action drew criticism from advocates who said the agreements offered protections for students facing discrimination and harassment. Shiwali Patel, senior director of education justice at the National Women’s Law Center, said the rescissions represent a step back from protecting vulnerable students in schools, calling it “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 added that the administration’s goal was to “erase protections for trans people.”
Some of the terminated agreements were tied to earlier complaints and settlements. The Education Department said Taft College settled a case in 2023 with the Office for Civil Rights after a student accused faculty of discrimination that included refusing to use the student’s preferred pronouns. The college agreed to faculty training on Title IX and revisions to clarify that refusal to use a person’s preferred name and pronoun could constitute harassment.
For Sacramento City Unified School District, the Education Department said the agreement followed a 2022 complaint by a student after a teacher refused to use preferred pronouns and refused to place the student—who identified as male—in a boys’ group for a class activity. The department said the 2024 resolution agreement included training for employees on civil rights law, sexual harassment, and procedures for formal complaints.
The Education Department said Delaware Valley School District’s settlement traced to an agreement reached with the Obama administration that required allowing students to use bathrooms that align with their gender identity. In February, the department sent the district a letter rescinding that settlement and, the department said, required the district to roll back its antidiscrimination protections for transgender students. The board’s later vote followed those demands.
Rescinding civil-rights agreements, the Education Department said, is unusual, but it said it has taken similar steps before. The department cited a prior termination last year of an agreement involving books removed from a school library in Georgia and another involving harsh discipline and unequal education opportunities for Native students in the Rapid City Area School District in South Dakota.