The U.S. Department of Justice launched compliance review investigations on Monday into four California public school districts, including San Francisco Unified School District, over their LGBTQ+ policies.
The agency will assess whether the districts allowed parents to opt out of instruction related to sexual orientation and gender ideology, and whether transgender students are allowed access to bathrooms, locker rooms and athletic teams based on their gender identity rather than biological sex.
In addition to San Francisco, the compliance reviews cover Graves Elementary School District, Santa Rita Union School District, and Soledad Unified School District.
California is the second state in the last two months to face Justice Department investigations into multiple districts. In April, the agency announced investigations into 36 Illinois school districts for the same reasons.
The Justice Department last year entered a partnership with the U.S. Department of Education, establishing a joint Title IX Special Investigations Team to investigate and enforce the separation of transgender students from girls’ and women’s athletics teams and spaces in schools and colleges. The administration said the move was intended to protect cisgender girls and women.
In announcing the investigation into the California districts on June 8, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said, “This Department of Justice will not tolerate local school authorities trampling on the rights of parents concerning the education of their children.”
Harmeet, who leads Justice's Civil RIghts Division, added that the U.S. Supreme Court’s "recent decisions in Mahmoud and Mirabelli have put all school districts on notice: policies that keep parents in the dark about sexuality and gender ideology in the classroom must end now.”
Together, the Supreme Court’s decisions in Mahmoud v. Taylor and Mirabelli v. Bonta expanded parental rights by setting precedent on school districts' parental notification policies when it comes to LGBTQ+-related instruction and students' gender transitions.
In January, the Education Department announced a string of Title IX investigations into state and local school systems with policies that allow transgender students to play on sports teams aligning with their gender identity. School systems targeted included the New York City Department of Education, Washington’s Tacoma Public Schools and the Hawaii State Department of Education.
The Justice Department's most recent investigations come as education leaders await a Supreme Court ruling any day now in two cases — Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J. — that could set precedent on transgender student participation on sports teams and, potentially, access for trans students to other school programs or facilities.
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