(The Center Square) — Virginia Public Schools in Loudoun County voted this week to keep their gender policy, allowing transgender students to use facilities, despite the U.S. Department of Education finding the policy violates Title IX.
According to the federal law, sex-separated spaces are required on federally funded school campuses, but with Loudoun County rejecting this compliance, almost $46 million in federal funds may be cut.
“The Loudoun County School Board remains steadfast in its commitment to ensuring every student in Loudoun County Public Schools is safe, supported, and able to thrive. We also remain committed to complying with applicable law and to protecting the rights of all students,” a spokesperson for the school board said in a statement.
In July, the Education Department found five Northern Virginia schools in violation of Title IX over policies that allowed transgender students to access bathrooms and locker rooms.
In a resolution agreement on July 25, the department gave each school 10 days to change the policies or face possible referral to the U.S. Department of Justice and the withholding of federal funds.
“Although this type of behavior was tolerated by the previous Administration, it’s time for Northern Virginia’s experiment with radical gender ideology and unlawful discrimination to come to an end,” said Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor in a press release. “The Trump Administration will not sacrifice the safety, dignity, and innocence of America’s young women and girls at the altar of an anti-scientific illiberalism.”
Gov. Glenn Youngkin, R-Virginia, said the findings align with raised concerns from parents over the past year.
“These school divisions have been violating federal law, deliberately neglecting their responsibility to protect students’ safety, privacy and dignity,” Youngkin said in a statement.
Sarah Parshall Perry, vice president and legal fellow of Defending Education, told The Center Square that there will always be a difference in the interpretation of clean black letter text of long-standing civil rights law until the U.S. Supreme Court weighs in.
The Trump administration continues to hold these educational institutions accountable to the law, Perry added.
“This administration, and I tip my hat to them, is batting significant cleanup on a longstanding government effort from the Biden administration, that really began in the Obama years … to ultimately force transgender contagion upon all American educational outlets. This is simply a return to ground zero,” Perry said
Many parents who support these gender policies want students to be safe and compare banning transgender students from facilities to white and Black segregation.
“I am fully in support of them keeping it completely intact and in place. I think that trans students deserve to be respected and protected by the school system,” said Meredith Ray, a mother of two students.
Perry from Defending Education told The Center Square that this segregation comparison does a disservice to Black Americans.
“A biological boy wanting to use a girl’s bathroom is not the same as being segregated: not being allowed to drink from the same water fountain, sit at the same lunch counter, or ride the same bus,” Perry said. “Those are two completely different calculuses, and quite frankly, I think it does a disservice to all of the Black Americans who work so hard to guarantee equality, not just in education, but in public accommodations.”
