Justice Department sues Kansas school system on transgender policies

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Department of Justice filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against the school system in Kansas City, Kansas, over its policies on transgender students.

The lawsuit comes more than a year after the Education Department first said it was investigating four districts in Kansas following a complaint from the Defense of Freedom Institute. The conservative group’s complaint alleged the schools had policies preventing disclosure of a student’s “transgender status” to parents without the student’s consent.

Schools in Kansas City, Kansas, have a policy of using students’ preferred names and pronouns. The district also says requests from students who do not wish to involve their parents will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, according to the Justice Department lawsuit.

In April, the Education Department said it found the four Kansas districts in violation of the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act. The districts violated the privacy law, the department said, by maintaining a policy of not disclosing a student’s gender transition at the parents’ request, though the department did not cite a specific instance where this happened.

The districts did not sign the government’s proposed resolution agreements and, in June, the Education Department said it would work with the Justice Department to bring the districts into compliance.

The district in Kansas City, Kansas, which has more than 20,000 students, disputed in a statement that it was out of compliance with federal law and said it was “disappointed by the DOJ’s decision to file the lawsuit.” It said it wouldn’t comment further because litigation is pending.

Some states — including Idaho and Iowa — have passed laws requiring parents to be notified when students seek to use a different pronoun or name as part of their effort to socially transition genders. Kansas does not have such a law. Meanwhile, a lawsuit is pending over a California statute that barred schools from outing students.

President Donald Trump’s administration has penalized schools that have made efforts to accommodate students based on their gender identity. It has filed lawsuits in California and Minnesota over state policies permitting transgender students to participate in interscholastic sports and opened civil rights investigations into schools and universities over their policies on transgender students.

Tuesday’s lawsuit is the first the administration has filed using FERPA to assert a parent’s right to know about their child’s gender transition. The administration seeks to compel the district to disavow its stated policies around transgender students and to give parents greater access to student records.

“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 K. Dhillon said. “The Department will not tolerate school districts playing fast and loose with federal law in the service of radical gender ideology.”

Kansas’ attorney general, Republican Kris Kobach, a Trump supporter, first began highlighting Kansas schools’ policies about transgender kids more than two years ago. In a February 2024 news release, he announced that several Kansas districts were allowing “employees to hide from parents the fact that a student may be using a different name or pronouns at school.”

Advocates for LGBTQ+ students say kids who come out as transgender can sometimes face serious consequences at home, such as being kicked out. But critics like Kobach argue that parents shouldn’t be kept in the dark.

“Parents should know, and have an opportunity to be involved in, such an important aspect of their well-being,” Kobach wrote in the news release.

As for the other school systems investigated in Kansas, the Department of Education last week announced the Topeka district had agreed to rescind any prior guidance that prevents schools from keeping parents informed. The department said Olathe and Shawnee Mission public schools “refused to come into voluntary compliance” and could face a potential loss of federal funding.

___

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.