by Dick Hall-Sizemore

The lawyers in the federal Dept. of Education and the Youngkin administration either don’t understand a court decision or are choosing to ignore it.

The department has notified the school districts of Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax, Loudoun, and Prince William that their policies allowing transgender students to use restrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity violate federal law. Specifically, it asserts that the policies violate Title IX of the Civil Rights Act. The complaint that sparked the investigation and departmental action claimed the localities granted “greater rights to students whose ‘gender identity’ does not match their biological sex than it does to students whose ‘gender identity’ matches their biological sex.”

According to the Washington Post, the department gave the school districts “10 days to ‘voluntarily agree’ with a proposed resolution to, among other things, rescind the existing gender-identity policies; issue a memorandum to schools explaining that future policies must separate students strictly on the basis of sex; and adopt ‘biology-based definitions of the words ‘male’ and ‘female’ in all practices and policies relating to Title IX.’”

Gov. Youngkin praised the federal department’s action, saying the school districts had ”got away with this behavior because the Biden administration backed them up.” He went on to claim, “These school divisions have been violating federal law, deliberately neglecting their responsibility to protect students’ safety, privacy and dignity, and ignoring parents’ rights.”

There is a major problem that the feds and Youngkin seem to be overlooking. In 2020, the Fourth U.S. Court of Appeals, in Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board, upheld a district court finding that a school’s policy preventing a transgender student from using the restroom that matched the student’s gender identity violated the rights of the student under Title IX. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider the case on appeal.

In summary, what the Dept. of Education is claiming in its letters to the school districts is exactly the opposite of what the federal appeals court has said the law is. The policies of the school districts are in line with the decision of the appeals court. The last time I checked, a federal appeals court ruling supersedes the interpretation of the law by a federal agency. To be fair to the Dept. of Education, perhaps all their lawyers have been fired.