Until recently, challenges to “secret social transitioning” in schools have come from parents and teachers suing for violation of their constitutional rights. We’ve covered their cases from the beginning here.
Now, the U.S. Department of Justice is stepping in with its own lawsuits, alleging that schools violate federal student-privacy laws when they socially transition children behind their parents’ backs and keep the records from them.
In a case announced this week, the DOJ targets Anne Arundel County Public Schools in Maryland over its gender identity policy. The DOJ’s complaint, filed in federal district court, alleges the school district directs staff to solicit information, facilitate students’ gender transitions at school, keep records memorializing the transition, and withhold the information from parents, in violation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (“FERPA”) and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (“PPRA”), which apply to schools that receive federal funding.
According to the complaint, the district’s policy lets staff decide unilaterally to withhold gender-identity information from parents based on claimed “safety” concerns. The district also reports “gender identity” information to the Maryland State Department of Education without notifying the parents or giving them the opportunity to challenge its accuracy, according to the DOJ.
This past July, the Department of Education, in partnership with the DOJ, warned the school district that it was violating FERPA and threatened to sue. The district subsequently revised its regulation in August.
But according to the DOJ’s complaint, the changes don’t go far enough to protect parents’ rights under the federal privacy laws.
The DOJ complaint draws on the experience of parents Jane and John Doe, who anonymously filed their own federal lawsuit against the district. According to the Does, during the 2025-2026 school year, a staff member questioned students one-on-one about their preferred names and pronouns without involving parents.
The Does discovered the school had started socially transitioning their daughter only after they received an email from a staff member that referred to her with a male first name. When confronted, the staff member lied about helping their daughter “pretend to be male,” the DOJ said in its statement.
Even after the staff member admitted to the cover-up, according to the DOJ lawsuit, the Anne Arundel district still refused to share the details and records of their daughter’s gender transition with the Does.
The DOJ alleges the district’s conduct violated parents’ rights under FERPA to review and challenge their children’s education records. It also alleges a PPRA violation: soliciting sensitive information from students without first obtaining parental consent or giving parents notice and an opportunity to opt their children out.
The DOJ has also filed a statement of interest in the Does’ case.
The government asks the court to declare Anne Arundel’s policies unlawful and to block them. A spokesman for the school district disputed the claims but declined to comment further.
This is the second lawsuit the Trump administration has filed against a school district over its gender-secrecy policy. In September, DOJ sued the Kansas City, Kansas school district for allegedly violating FERPA and PPRA in what the department called a “first-of-its-kind” lawsuit.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, promised the Kansas City suit would be “the first of many.”
Featured image via Instagram.
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