The Title IX order from President Donald Trump’s Education Department has not swayed the Loudoun County, Virginia, school board, which voted Tuesday to keep its transgender policies. The decision comes despite direct warnings that the district and four others could face legal action and lose federal funding for violating the federal ban on sex discrimination.
According to the Washington Post, the board “voted to maintain its policies allowing transgender students to use facilities that match their gender identity,” ignoring the Office for Civil Rights’ directive to adopt biology-based definitions of sex. That office concluded last month that Loudoun, Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax, and Prince William school districts violate Title IX by permitting students to “access intimate, sex-segregated facilities based on the students’ subjective ‘gender identity.’”
The Education Department has ordered the districts to change course or “risk imminent enforcement action including referral to the U.S. Department of Justice.” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon confirmed they could also lose federal funding.
Since returning to office, President Trump has reversed multiple Biden-era policies on transgender issues, including banning biological men from women’s sports and defining sex strictly as male or female. Loudoun County, however, has a history of controversy on the issue, including public outrage over sexual assaults in 2021 involving a student identifying as “gender-fluid.”
“These five Virginia school districts have been trampling on the rights of students in the service of an extreme political ideology,” said acting assistant secretary for civil rights Craig Trainor. “The Trump Administration will not sacrifice the safety, dignity, and innocence of America’s young women and girls at the altar of an anti-scientific illiberalism.”
