The U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Attorney for the District of Kansas have formally filed suit against the Kansas City, Kan., public schools over the school district’s guidelines pertaining to its transgender students, the department announced in a Tuesday news release.
The lawsuit comes after several months of back and forth between Wyandotte County’s largest school district and the federal government. The government has long maintained that the school district’s staff are facilitating “secret ‘gender transitions’ for children at school,” without telling parents about it.
KCKPS, meanwhile, has defended itself, claiming that it is not breaking any laws in this situation. Its internal guidelines surrounding students who wish to use different identifying pronouns at school include using the pronouns students ask to be called by.
The federal government argues that KCKPS moves forward with those guidelines without telling, or getting permission from, children’s parents, according to the release. It is considered a violation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA), according to the suit.
Lawsuit filed against KCKPS
The lawsuit, filed in the District of Kansas, asks that a federal judge declare that KCKPS has made those violations and that they order the district to stop enforcing any of those guidelines. It follows multiple threats of legal action by the DOJ and U.S. Department of Education, which have also said they’d try to revoke the local school district’s funding for refusing to address the alleged violations.
In April, the Education Department ruled that the district—as well as two others in Johnson County and one in Topeka—violated FERPA by not notifying parents when their children express they want to use different pronouns or names at school.
“For decades, schools operated with little accountability as federal parental rights laws like FERPA and PPRA went unenforced, allowing some districts to cut parents out of deeply personal matters involving their own children,” Linda McMahon, the U.S. secretary of education, wrote in the news release announcing the lawsuit.
“That era is over. The Trump Administration is enforcing these laws at an unprecedented scale and making clear that schools cannot hide sensitive information from parents and expect to operate with impunity.”
KCKPS maintains it’s complying with the law
In a Tuesday statement, KCKPS—which serves more than 20,000 students among nearly 50 campuses—again maintained that it’s fully complying with the law and was disappointed by the DOJ’s decision to file suit.
“Because this matter is now pending in federal court, the district will respond to the Complaint through the appropriate legal process and will not make any further comment at this time,” according to the district.
