Intensifying a policy clash with the Trump administration, California this week sued the U.S. Department of Education over the agency’s recent finding that the state is violating federal student privacy law by not requiring schools to disclose students’ gender transitions to parents.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, filed the lawsuit Feb. 11 in U.S. District Court in San Francisco against the department, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, and others. The suit is seeking to block the department’s demands that the state take multiple corrective actions to come into compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which guarantees parents access to student records.
“California seeks to protect itself, and California schools and students, by preventing the harms threatened by defendants’ illegal attempt to coerce the state into complying with its unlawful corrective actions based on the unsupported position that California is not in substantial compliance with FERPA because it has refused to interpret FERPA’s requirements in a manner that far exceeds the scope of the statute,” Bonta says in the suit filed.
On Jan. 28, McMahon and another department official wrote to the California education department asserting that state policies and practices were pressuring local school officials “to withhold information about students’ so-called ‘gender transitions’ from their parents.”
The letter cited, among other things, a 2024 state law, known as AB 1955, which bars school districts from requiring its employees to disclose a student’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression to any person without the student’s consent, “unless otherwise required by state or federal law.”
The Education Department demanded that the state agency take corrective actions, including informing districts that school gender support plans for students are education records protected by FERPA, and thus subject to disclosure to parents, and that the state support affirmative “pro-parental notification approaches.”
“The persistent efforts by schools across the state to hide such matters from parents cannot be squared with FERPA,” the federal agency’s letter said.
The Education Department said if California did not take corrective actions, it would terminate all federal education funding to the state, which totals $4.9 billion annually.
No evidence of violating FERPA, California says
Bonta, in the lawsuit, asserts that the Education Department’s conclusion that the state is violating FERPA is not supported by evidence and that California is in “substantial compliance” with the law.
“FERPA does not impose any affirmative duty on [local education agencies] to disclose records absent a parental request,” the suit says. “Thus, any evidence about school districts creating gender support plans with students without first notifying parents is irrelevant.”
The suit says the federal department presented no evidence that any parental request to view their child’s gender support plan has been denied, and that the California education department this week wrote to local administrators to remind them that such plans are education records covered by FERPA.
The suit seeks a court declaration that the state is not out of compliance with FERPA and to vacate the federal department’s findings letter.
“We will not stand by as [the Education Department] uses baseless claims to attack crucial education funding,” Bonta said in a news release.
The latest clash comes as the U.S. Supreme Court is considering an emergency request for action from a handful of California teachers and parents in a related case. In Mirabelli v. Bonta, the teachers and parents have asked the justices to reinstate a federal district court decision that said parents have a federal constitutional right to be informed by schools of any gender nonconformity and social transition by their children.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, in San Francisco, blocked the district court decision in January, calling it too “sweeping” and “ambiguous” and likely wrong on the merits. The parents, backed by the Thomas More Society, a conservative legal organization, are not specifically challenging AB 1955, which was adopted after they filed their lawsuit.
California told the Supreme Court in a brief in the emergency action that AB 1955 does not forbid a school district from allowing its employees to choose to disclose a student’s gender information to parents. (The law was adopted in response to a handful of California school districts that had adopted policies requiring teachers and others to make such disclosures.)
Meanwhile, the Education Department is conducting similar FERPA investigations of Maine and Washington state.
And California last year sued the Trump administration after the U.S. Department of Justice demanded that the state certify that it will abide by the administration’s view that transgender female student-athletes may not participate in female athletics. The state says such a certification would conflict with state law and its view of federal law that transgender female athletes be able to compete on teams consistent with their gender identity.
