The Trump administration on Monday threatened legal action and the end of federal education funding against the Anne Arundel County Public School District of Maryland for allegedly withholding information about a child’s gender identity from their parents, The Baltimore Banner reported.
The federal government began investigating the school after the Education Department’s Student Privacy Policy Office received complaints from parents who accused school officials of allegedly “socially transitioning” their child with a masculine name and pronouns without notifying them.
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The practice is in line with policies approved by the county school board in 2023. The district’s policy says students have “the right to be addressed by a name and pronoun that correspond to the student’s gender identity.” However, the Trump administration claims that the practice violates the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a 1974 federal law that gives parents the right to inspect their child’s educational records.
“As a mother and a grandmother, it is unconscionable that any school district would hide the most sensitive information about children in their care from their own parents,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement. “This is not only an affront to basic moral principles, but also to parents’ rights under federal law.”
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The child’s religious parents recently filed a lawsuit over the matter in Maryland’s U.S. District Court. They’re being represented by America First Legal (AFL), an anti-LGBTQ+ conservative legal organization. The parents want school officials to start misgendering their child and for the judge to declare the school district’s trans-inclusive name and pronoun policies as illegal. The school district has declined to comment on the case.
The lawsuit says the school began referring to the child with a masculine name and pronouns at the beginning of the school year at the student’s request. The parents only became aware of this last December 10 when the school emailed the parents about a lab experiment happening in class the next day. The email used a male name to refer to their child.
The parents say that their religious beliefs dictate that “God creates each person as male or female, that sex is based on biology rather than internal self-perception, and that sex cannot be altered.”
The lawsuit says the school district’s policy violates constitutional 1st Amendment free speech rights and and 14th Amendment due process and equal protection rights under the law, and also violates the Maryland Constitution.
The parents are now seeking injunctions to force school officials to misgender their child and refer to them with the feminine name they were given at birth. The parents also want the judge to declare the district’s policies on transgender children and gender identity as illegal.
The Trump administration has regularly threatened legal action and a withholding of federal educational funding to schools with trans-inclusive policies.
Currently, 15 states have policies requiring schools to out trans and nonbinary students to their parents, according to the Movement Advancement Project. Anti-LGBTQ+ conservatives largely oppose policies that allow schools to respect the identities of trans and nonbinary students without first notifying their potentially unsupportive parents.
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