America's richest county fights Trump to protect boys in girls' restrooms, but caves on pronouns

The richest county in America and the heavily indebted federal government that largely made it rich are going to the mattresses over whether students have the legal right to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms in public schools, paralleling the response by the richest university in America to the Trump administration's conditions for unfreezing its federal funding.

Loudoun County Public Schools is endangering its federal funding by spurning an Education Department order for the second time in four months, this time the July 25 demand to rescind its affirmation of gender identity over sex pertaining to "intimate facilities" and sports and define "male" and "female" by biology in Title IX-related practices.

The Tuesday night school board meeting, which wrapped up overnight, drew a "huge turnout," according to a local reporter. "The only trans policy you don't promote is transparency," one parent testified among the dozens who lined up for public comment, WJLA.com reported.

The parents and activists outraged by the 6-3 vote to reject the DOE demand, some of them close to the Trump administration, promised to fight on.

"The bathroom/locker room policies in Loudoun County and elsewhere in NOVA [northern Virginia] will be dead and buried by this time next year," predicted America First Legal senior adviser Ian Prior, recounting its years of fights with the district over reported sexual assaults stemming from the gender identity policy.

LCPS public information officer Dan Adams told Just the News it has received "approximately" $47 million from Washington this fiscal year, up from the $46 million he reported last month when the Board of Supervisors considered covering possible federal losses from the school board's refusal to certify it doesn't adhere to "illegal" diversity, equity and inclusion practices.

The suburban D.C. Prince William County School Board, which also received the DOE demand, met behind closed doors with legal counsel last week to consider the resolution agreement but hasn't signaled further how it might vote, WTOP reported Wednesday night.

The timing is notable because the LCPS board threw in the towel on compelling teachers to use students' preferred pronouns a week before DOE threatened Justice Department referral if the board didn't stop prioritizing gender identity over sex.

Loudoun County Circuit Court dismissed a lawsuit by teacher Monica Gill after the board certified that Policy 8040 does not "on its face" compel staff to "use a pronoun" at odds with a student's sex, after initially interpreting the policy to force teachers to "use the name and pronoun that correspond to their consistently asserted gender identity."

Her lawyers at the Alliance Defending Freedom credited the board's flip to ADF's victory for another Virginia teacher, Peter Vlaming, in the form of a six-figure settlement that followed the Virginia Supreme Court's reinstatement of his preferred pronoun challenge.

While the Education Department does not appear to have responded to the gauntlet thrown down by LCPS, it opened new investigations of four Kansas school districts Thursday – Kansas City, Olathe, Shawnee and Topeka – for allegedly giving students access to opposite-sex restrooms on the basis of gender identity, among related policies.

They were prompted by a Defense of Freedom Institute complaint and a letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon from Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach. The department's announcement notes that "elimination" of federal funding is on the table.

Virginia GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Attorney General Jason Miyares, like Kobach a Republican, announced an investigation into LCPS for its allegedly retaliatory Title IX investigation into three boys who objected to sharing a locker room with a girl who identifies as a boy and recorded the boys as they entered their own locker room.

Miyares referred the district to the feds after his investigation also found "persistent reports that LCPS and the School Board take adverse and potentially unlawful action against parents, teachers, and public speakers.”

Youngkin went even further this week by instructing state police to conduct a criminal investigation into nearby Fairfax County Public Schools, in the fifth-wealthiest county in America, based on allegations that school officials may have arranged and used taxpayer money for minors to get abortions without parental notification.

'Direct tension' with ruling based on heavily disputed reading of SCOTUS

Loudoun County School Board Chair Melinda Mansfield and Superintendent Aaron Spence said Wednesday the board voted against compliance due to "direct tension between federal agency guidance and binding judicial authority" from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

That Richmond-based court's Grimm precedent, which conflates sex and gender identity in Title IX, was based on legally nonbinding Obama administration Title IX guidance, prompting the Supreme Court to vacate the ruling and remand it for reconsideration when the first-term Trump administration rescinded its predecessor's guidance.

The 4th Circuit returned the same result in 2020 based on a heavily disputed reading of the SCOTUS precedent Bostock, extending it to Title IX despite the high court explicitly limiting it to Title VII employment discrimination on the basis of sex, in that case treating a male employee who presents as a woman differently from a female employee.

SCOTUS fell short of the four votes needed to rehear Grimm in 2021, with only justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas saying they would have reheard the case.

The school board's Tuesday night vote spurred denunciations from parental rights activists and current and potential school board members, accusing the majority of putting the welfare of its neediest students at risk and eliminating the "privacy and safety of young women." 

Santos Muñoz, independent candidate for the Dulles District seat, accused the majority of endangering Latino families and "our most vulnerable learners" in an X post sharing his testimony at the meeting.

"It is deeply concerning that a motion to rescind a policy that is demonstrably harming more than 20% of our 82,000 students –many of whom rely on this funding for basic needs – was supported by only 3 out of 9 board members," he wrote.

LCPS already owes "close to $30 million in federal funds meant for special education that was misallocated and must be repaid" and now stands to lose another $50 million, Ashburn District member Deana Griffiths wrote on Facebook.

It's using "tax dollars to violate the law and push ideology" as students' academic scores decline, "all to fight over bathroom and locker room access for 0.01% of our more than 80,000 students," said Griffiths, one of the three no votes with Lauren Shernoff and Kari LaBell.

LaBell said she was "very worried and disappointed" by the vote. "Not only are we denying the Department of Education and the Office of Civil Rights, but we are continuing to leave many of our students with a bathroom policy that makes them feel disrespected and abandoned."

The trio previously failed to open an Aug. 4 meeting about DOE's demand "so that parents and community members would know where the school board stands," with the Democratic board majority keeping it closed, WJLA reported. 

The board also deliberated behind closed doors Aug. 12 for an hour and a half, followed by Vice Chair Anne Donohue's successful motion to direct LCPS legal counsel to tell the feds it's open to "further discussion" but can't agree to the terms "at this time," LoudounNow reported. The meeting recessed without further discussion of the issue. 

Supporters of the gender identity policy had the larger demonstration outside the meeting, with more than 75 in the pro-8040 crowd compared to about 20 against it, but more opponents testified against it in the meeting, LoudounNow said.

"This is much more now than an issue between the transgender issue or bathrooms or anything else," Amy Riccardi testified. "This is really going to seriously impact all of our Title I [federal program for "low-achieving children"] schools in Sterling, and you need to support them."

In the pro-8040 demonstration, mother of two Meredith Ray compared the opponents to advocates for segregation, saying she was raised by someone "not allowed to go to school with white people," which many schools then "thought was unsafe."