A year after the Trump administration moved to cut funding from states and districts that don’t comply with its anti-transgender and anti-diversity policies, lawsuits filed by the administration against educational institutions have continued to advance in the courts — but with some roadblocks along the way, including in a recent landmark case.
United States v. California Interscholastic Foundation was filed in July 2025 by the U.S. Department of Justice against California and its governing body for high school sports, alleging "illegal sex discrimination against female student athletes" due to transgender students being allowed to play on girls' and women's athletic teams.
"These discriminatory policies and practices ignore undeniable biological differences between boys and girls, in favor of an amorphous 'gender identity,'" the Trump administration said in its complaint. "The results of these illegal policies are stark: girls are displaced from podiums, denied awards, and miss out on critical visibility for college scholarships and recognition."
It was among the first to be filed by the Justice Department in a bid to cut federal education funding following a referral from the U.S. Department of Education — with similar cases filed last year against Maine and Minnesota, and later other states. In fiscal 2025, California received $44.3 billion from the Education Department, of which approximately $3.8 billion remained available for drawdown by the state when the lawsuit was filed, according to court documents.
Just over a year after the department filed that lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Cynthia Valenzuela tossed the case in late August citing a "lack of clarity" around what Title IX permits and that "later interpretations cannot retroactively supply notice of a new condition for funds already accepted."
In dismissing the case, Valenzuela also prevented the Trump administration from filing another lawsuit in the future stemming from the administration's claims in that state. However, the administration could still choose to appeal the case.
The Department of Justice declined to comment.
While the decision will not directly impact other states involved in similar litigation with the Justice Department, a circuit split could eventually take the issue to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Trump administration’s push to ‘reshape civil rights laws’
In the Maine case, lawyers for the state have clashed with the Trump administration, responding to the Justice Department's lawsuit by claiming that the administration is "selectively enforcing Title IX against the Maine Department of Education and/or is maliciously and vindictively prosecuting this action.”
That case was brought after a public spat in February 2025 between Maine Gov. Janet Mills and President Donald Trump, whose administration launched investigations through at least three federal agencies — including the Education Department — after the disagreement.
Maine is now considering challenging that approach, calling it "highly unusual," and may push the administration to provide documentation and other information related to its Title IX enforcement in the state.
The Trump administration has resisted Maine’s push for more information about its approach, saying the state's efforts to uncover potential evidence are “frivolous and futile."
That case and others are pending.
In the meantime, and despite the Justice Department's recent loss in the California case, the Trump administration's broader approach to civil rights enforcement across its agencies has already begun to impact school district and state policies.
That strategy has included Dear Colleague letters, agency guidance, relatively quick investigations, and certification requirements in addition to lawsuits and Justice Department referrals — which civil rights experts have described as everything from bold and targeted to questionable and unusual.
"There's a bigger attempt to reshape civil rights laws according to this administration's interpretation … it's not all happening in the courts," said Kayleigh Baker, a senior supervising consultant with TNG Consulting and an advisory board member for the Association of Title IX Administrators. Baker regularly works with districts and other educational entities on Title IX compliance. "And it's not all dependent on whether the courts bless what they're doing or not."
District changes under Trump administration’s pressure
Recently, for example, some districts have changed their LGBTQ+ policies after continued pressure from the Trump administration.
In Kansas’ Topeka Public Schools, the district signed an agreement that prevents it from creating gender support plans, requires existing plans to be shared with parents, and incorporates agency-approved teacher and administrator training materials on the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
The Education Department has also yanked millions in federal funding from discretionary grant recipients whose goals related to diversity, equity, and inclusion or LGBTQ+ issues.
One of the earliest such cuts was made to teacher training grant programs, of which the administration slashed over 100 grants worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The agency said at the time that the grants were cut because the programs trained teachers using “divisive ideologies."
A court order last week, however, said the grant terminations — and the underlying anti-DEI directive issued by the Education Department in February — were unlawful. Such decisions, Baker said, can take time.
"Even though courts have come and shut some of those things down, those decisions are happening after dozens, hundreds, or more schools and universities and recipients of those grants have already taken the time to unravel what they were doing because the government said they couldn't do it anymore," said Baker. "Once a school has closed an office or eliminated a program — or rewritten a policy or decided not to go a certain direction — a court ruling a year later doesn't put any of that back in place."
