(The Center Square) — New York City is taking the Trump administration to court over a decision to claw back tens of millions of dollars in federal funding over its transgender policies in public schools.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on Thursday, challenges the Department of Education’s move to strip nearly $50 million in funding allocated by the Biden administration last year to create six magnet high schools across Manhattan and the Bronx unless it committed to eliminating transgender protections.
Lawyers for the city’s Legal Department rope in the 47-page complaint that the decision to pull back the funding was done without notice and without congressional authority. They blasted the move as an “attempted end run around the congressional directive that school funding not be pulled on a whim” and asked the court to order DOE to restore the funding.
“The abrupt about-face by the department, seemingly based on the Trump Administration’s fixation with upending the department’s previously accepted interpretation of Title IX puts politics before public schools,” they wrote in the complaint. “It is also contrary to law, arbitrary and capricious, and based on a new interpretation of federal law imposed without engaging in notice-and-comment rulemaking.”
Last year, New York was awarded $30 million in funding through the Education Department’s Magnet Schools Assistance Program to convert six existing schools in the Bronx and Manhattan, including Esperanza Preparatory Academy, City College Academy of the Arts, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis High School.
New York’s public schools have long allowed transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms — and play on sporting teams — matching their gender identity.
But President Donald Trump signed the “No Men in Women’s Sports” executive order in February, which barred federal funding for educational institutions that allow males to compete on women’s or girls’ sports teams. Trump vowed to cut off funding to states that don’t comply with the directive.
Craig Trainor, the Education Department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, sent letters to New York and other school districts in September warning that the practice of giving students access to locker rooms and restrooms corresponding with their gender identity violates Title IX, a federal law that bans discrimination based on sex in education. But the city refused to comply with his demands.
The DOE’s funding cuts also targeted school systems in Chicago and Fairfax County, Virginia, over similar issues, which were accused by education officials of “blatantly discriminating against students based on race and sex.” Both school systems stand to lose more than $9 million.
City Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos said the legal challenge seeks to “fight back” against efforts to pull back the funds for the magnet program and protect transgender students.
“My deepest commitment is to provide our magnet students, our transgender and gender expansive students, and every single student at New York City Public Schools with the ability to thrive academically and socially; to achieve that, my team and I work tirelessly to ensure every student feels seen, supported, and safe,” she said in a statement.
A DOE spokesperson dismissed the city’s legal challenge, saying it has “no merit” and criticizing NYC schools for refusing to comply with the president’s directive.
“The MSAP program requires certification of civil rights compliance, which we could obviously not do in the face of NYC’s continued determination to violate the rights of female students under Title IX,” the agency said in a statement.
