One of Virginia‘s largest public school districts refused to end its policy allowing students to use private facilities not aligned with their biological sex, setting it up to lose millions in federal funding.
The board governing Loudoun County Public Schools voted 6-3 this week to defy the Education and Justice Departments by continuing to back Policy 8040. The policy, adopted in 2021, allows students to use the locker rooms and restrooms that correspond with their gender identity, meaning a biological male or female who has transitioned to the opposite sex can use facilities that do not match their biological sex.
The conflict between LCPS and the Trump administration centers on disagreements over interpretations of Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in education. The board interprets Title IX to include protections for gender identity. While Title IX has historically been interpreted to be based on providing protections based on biological sex, the Biden administration’s Education Department expanded the federal regulation to include gender identity protections for transgender people, leading the Trump administration’s department to reverse the policy and return it to the historical definition under Secretary of Education Linda McMahon’s tenure.
Still, LCPS argues its policy remains in line with the court’s interpretation of Title IX, specifically in legal precedent from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit protecting transgender students.
However, McMahon has previously warned that LCPS could lose up to $50 million in federal funding if the school board didn’t rescind the gender identity policy by Friday.
The policy sparked particular controversy after an incident earlier this year, where LCPS opened an investigation into three high school boys who expressed discomfort that a biological female who identified as a transgender male changed in the boys’ locker room at a school. School district officials at the time expressed concern that the three boys might have violated Title IX regulations, which LCPS interpreted as protecting the transgender male in that case.
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares defended the three boys under scrutiny by launching a probe into LCPS. He concluded the investigation in early June, referring the case to the Justice and Education Departments after accusing the district of initiating a “retaliatory Title IX investigation” against the three male students at Stone Bridge High School “after they expressed sincere religious objections to the policy.”
Miyares’s investigation showed “a disturbing misuse of authority by Loudoun County Public Schools, where students appear to have been targeted not for misconduct, but for expressing their discomfort for being forced to share a locker room with a member of the opposite sex,” a press release from his office claimed.
“Title IX was never meant to be used as a weapon against free speech or religious convictions,” Miyares said.
Weeks later, McMahon’s Education Department released the results of the federal probe in late July.
The department called on LCPS, and four other Virginia school districts with similar policies, to rescind the policies and adopt several recommendations, including regulations that allow students to access intimate facilities based on their “gender identity” rather than their sex, and requiring schools to “adopt biology-based definitions of the words ‘male’ and ‘female’ in all practices and policies relating to Title IX.”
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Alexandria City Public Schools, Arlington Public Schools, Prince William County Public Schools, and Fairfax County Public Schools are the four other schools being probed by the Trump administration.
All of them have similarly vowed to press ahead with gender identity policies allowing transgender students access to the private facilities of their choice.
