California’s gender secrecy policies, already hanging in the balance before the Supreme Court, are now in the federal government’s crosshairs.
The U.S. Department of Education announced it has found the California Department of Education (CDE) in continuing violation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)—a federal law giving parents the right to access their child’s education records—because of its policies pressuring school officials to conceal information about students’ expressed gender identity.
The DOE’s Student Privacy Policy Office (SPPO) investigation determined the CDE “egregiously abused its authority by pressuring school officials to withhold information about students’ so-called ‘gender transitions’ from their parents,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “Under Gavin Newsom’s failed leadership, school personnel have even bragged about facilitating ‘gender transitions,’ and shared strategies to target minors and conceal information about children from their own families.”
The Education Department’s actions are the latest to follow on President Trump’s Executive Order, “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” announced in January of last year. The President vowed to ensure that K-12 schools receiving federal funding comply with all applicable laws, including FERPA.
In California, and throughout the country, state educational guidance allows schools to facilitate students’ gender transitioning behind their parent’s backs. At the child’s request, the school will begin using a new name, new pronouns, allow access to opposite-sex restroom facilities, and other social changes, all without the parents’ knowledge or consent.
The SPPO concluded that “instead of ensuring compliance with FERPA as a recipient of Federal funding, California state laws, guidance, and legal actions – such as AB 1955, which prohibits schools from requiring parents to be informed of their child’s “gender transition” – have effectively coerced districts to withhold information from parents in violation of FERPA.”
School districts claim the state laws and policies put them in a position of “having to choose between complying with FERPA or getting sued by the State,” according to the Education Department.
To conceal a child’s newly expressed “gender identity,” as I explained earlier here, the school keeps “a sort of double set of books” for transgender students—one to be used when speaking to parents and the other to be used in the classroom. The SPPO found that “secret ‘gender support plans,'” are “kept in separate filing systems for the primary purpose of hiding these records from parents.” State guidance “asserts these plans are not part of a student’s cumulative record accessible to parents, which directly violates parents’ rights under FERPA to inspect all education records related to their minor children.”
The SPPO investigation revealed that “in emails dating back to 2022, staff discussed changing student names without parental knowledge, using different names in front of parents, and overriding the Parent Portal to limit what parents see.”
At least 300 students in California were reportedly put on “Gender Support Plans,” many without parental consent or knowledge, as we have covered in cases here and here.
Schools that bucked the state’s guidance so as to comply with FERPA were “aggressively targeted” and taken to court, the DOE continues. “When Chino Valley Unified School District’s school board adopted a parental notification policy in July 2023, state officials—including California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and California Attorney General Rob Bonta—acted swiftly to stop it, arguing that students have a constitutional right to privacy from their parents in California and that ‘transgender students may suffer from being ‘outed’ to their parents against their will.’ The Attorney General ultimately sued Chino Valley along with other districts who refused to hide information from parents claiming these policies violated the California Constitution and other State laws.”
The SPPO began its investigation in March 2025, after which it made several requests to the CDE to issue guidance “clarifying that parents have a right to inspect ‘gender support plans’ under FERPA.” And yet, the CDE “repeatedly refused to comply, despite certifying in its grant agreements that it would follow all federal laws,” according to the Education Department.
The SPPO has offered CDE the opportunity to voluntarily resolve its FERPA violations by taking a number of actions, including notifying school officials that ‘gender support plans’ are education records under FERPA, subject to parental inspection upon request. It also directs the state to notify school officials that violations of FERPA risk loss of federal financial assistance.
The DOE announcement comes just weeks after federal district court Judge Roger Benitez permanently blocked California’s parental exclusion policies statewide—only to have the Ninth Circuit nix his decision, issuing a stay earlier this month. The parents and teachers challenging the policies filed an emergency application to the Supreme Court to vacate the appellate ruling, with a decision expected at any time.
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