The Department of Education on Monday announced it was dissolving Title IX agreements with five school districts and a college intended to protect the rights and privacy of transgender students — including the La Mesa-Spring Valley School District.
The DOE's Office for Civil Rights repealed the provisions of resolution agreements that called on school districts to take specific actions to resolve noncompliance with federal civil rights law.
Department officials claim that Title IX, which "prohibits discrimination based on sex in education programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance," was used improperly to prevent discrimination on the basis of "gender identity," not sex.
"Today, the Trump administration is removing the unnecessary and unlawful burdens that prior administrations imposed on schools in its relentless pursuit of a radical transgender agenda," Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said. "While previous administrations launched Title IX investigations based on 'misgendering,' the Trump administration is investigating allegations of girls and women being injured by men on their sports team or feeling violated by men in their intimate spaces.
"Today is yet another demonstration of the Trump administration's commitment to uphold the law, protect our students and restore common sense. No longer will the federal government force educational institutions to violate the law or punish them for upholding it."
The DOE is operating under the binary sex definition, male or female. The Biden and Obama administrations' departments interpreted Title IX more broadly to include protections for transgender students.
With the terminations announced Monday, transgender, intersex and nonbinary students will no longer have protection from sex-based discrimination.
A request for comment from La Mesa-Spring Valley School District Superintendent David Feliciano was not immediately returned. The district serves more than 10,000 students in the East County communities of La Mesa, El Cajon, Casa de Oro, Mount Helix, and Spring Valley.
Monday's announcement is the latest Trump administration move to roll back special legal protections and other considerations for transgender individuals.
Last month, four families sued Rady Children's Health in San Diego for its decision to terminate gender-affirming treatments — at least partly due to threats from the White House to withhold funding.
In a proposed class action lawsuit filed in San Diego Superior Court, the families allege that the health care system's decision to discontinue much of its gender-affirming care program is discriminatory toward their children, as well as some 1,900 other patients receiving gender-affirming care within the system.
Rady was also sued by the California Attorney General's Office over the decision, which led a judge to order Rady last month to continue providing care — other than surgeries — for patients under 19 years of age. Another hearing in that case is scheduled this month.
Rady representatives declined to comment on pending litigation, but in court last month, attorneys representing the health care system said escalating threats from the Trump administration to cut off Medicare and Medicaid funding played a major role in the decision.
Though the latest lawsuit acknowledges the court order prohibiting Rady from ending gender-affirming care, it states that the plaintiffs "live with profound uncertainty knowing that defendants plan to end their care as soon as possible."
The families are represented by the Western Center on Law & Poverty, Impact Fund and the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, and in a statement, National Center for LGBTQ Rights Senior Staff Attorney Amy Whelan said, "No hospital in California has the right to single out transgender youth and deny them critical health care. That is discrimination, plain and simple, and it violates California law."
In a lawsuit filed by California and more than a dozen other states, U.S. District Court Judge Mustafa Kasubhai ruled in March that U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. overstepped his legal authority by issuing a December declaration stating gender-affirming care doesn't "meet professional recognized standards of health care" and that doctors and hospitals that provide such care could be excluded from federal health care programs.
The declaration was cited by one of Rady's attorneys during February's hearing in San Diego, who said that anything perceived as a violation of the declaration "is potential grounds for exclusion from Medicare or Medicaid coverage."
California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement regarding the Oregon decision, "This ruling marks a major victory in our fight against the Trump administration's cruel campaign against transgender Americans. The Kennedy Declaration sought to unlawfully bully doctors and hospitals into halting crucial care for transgender individuals nationwide."
