Author: BelieveAgain

The U.S. Department of Education announced Wednesday that the California Department of Education and the California Interscholastic Federation violated the civil rights of female students on the basis of sex by allowing transgender students to compete in school sports according to their gender identity.Having concluded its investigation, the U.S. Department of Education is calling on California to “voluntarily agree” to change what it determined are “unlawful practices” within 10 days or risk “imminent enforcement action.”“Although Governor Gavin Newsom admitted months ago it was ‘deeply unfair’ to allow men to compete in women’s sports, both the California Department of Education and…

President Donald Trump and U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon have called on the Republican Congress to disperse the Department of Education’s programs to other federal agencies. As described in a March 20 executive order, the president hopes to improve student outcomes by reducing the federal burden on educators and moving control of education back to states, local communities, and families.For K-12 educators who have grown accustomed to the Education Department’s existence over the past 45 years, these moves already sound scary. Those fears are heightened when politicians, district leaders, and union leaders raise doubts about how dismantling the department…

California must remove all references to gender identity from a sex education curriculum in the next two months or risk losing federal funds, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services told the state in a letter, marking yet another example of multiple agencies putting pressure on states that disagree with the Trump administration.Department officials last week notified the California Department of Public Health that mentions of gender identity in the state’s federally funded Personal Responsibility Education Program were “both unacceptable and well outside the program’s core purpose.” If the state doesn’t remove those materials from the curriculum, it could…

Road trips have become synonymous with turning points in Jane Hodgdon’s life.As a teacher in Colorado in the 1990s, she swore she would never go back to the East Coast, where she grew up, and work for the federal government, even as she often worked weekends and summers in local restaurants to make ends meet.But in 1999, she set out on a road trip with her then-husband to visit a handful of graduate programs she was considering. That trip ended in her home state of Maryland, where she had planned to stay for a while. Hodgdon and her husband decided…

A federal appeals court on Friday unanimously upheld a lower court’s injunction blocking Louisiana’s law requiring a display of the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom—a decision that may be consequential now that other states have adopted similar laws.“If the posted copies of the Ten Commandments are to have any effect at all, it will be to induce the schoolchildren to read, meditate upon, perhaps to venerate and obey, the Commandments,” said a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, in New Orleans. “This is not a permissible state objective under the Establishment…

From school restrooms to LGBTQ+ curriculum to disability rights, the nation’s courts weighed in on a wave of high-stakes education cases this spring.Many of these developments will have far-reaching implications for how schools navigate student rights, civil liberties, and access to federally funded programs.Here’s a look at some education-related court cases and stories from this spring. These cases span from mid-March through mid-June. Idaho can restrict transgender students’ restroom use, appeals court rules A federal appeals court has declined to block an Idaho law requiring public school students to use only the restroom and changing facilities corresponding to their “biological…

Schools nationwide this year are confronting a torrent of consequential changes and substantial threats to their federal funding—with little relief in sight. In its first months, President Donald Trump’s administration has moved to cut billions of dollars in education grant funding; terminate contracts for efforts to support students and support the educator workforce; and change rules for existing funding streams without warning. Some districts have temporarily lost access to money they were preparing to spend, and many are fretting over White House proposals to further shrink federal investment in schools.Federal funding for K-12 schools has never been entirely predictable or…

The Trump administration is proposing a change to a long-standing rule that requires schools provide equal opportunities under Title IX for all students to participate in noncontact sports. And it’s coming from the U.S. Department of Energy as the administration increasingly relies on other agencies to join the U.S. Department of Education in enforcing its interpretation of civil rights laws in schools. Multiple agencies in recent months have joined the Education Department in launching civil rights investigations into schools, athletic associations, and state education departments to advance the president’s directives to bar transgender athletes from girls’ sports and eliminate diversity,…

A federal court has again told the Trump administration to return laid-off U.S. Department of Education employees to the job—this time specifically to the arm of the federal agency that investigates discrimination complaints in schools.The same Boston-based federal judge who in May told the administration to reinstate nearly 1,400 laid-off Education Department employees issued an order in another case Wednesday telling the Education Department to restore its office for civil rights to how it existed when President Donald Trump took office in January. He also ordered the office to investigate all discrimination complaints it receives. The Trump administration had prioritized…

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a Tennessee law banning certain gender-transition treatments for transgender minors, in a decision with potential ripple effects for other state-level restrictions on transgender rights in education, including bans on transgender girls’ participation in school sports.Two justices, in fact, sent a signal that they believe states have wide authority to regulate sports eligibility and access to restrooms for transgender students.The 6-3 decision in United States v. Skrmetti upholds the 2023 Tennessee medical law under the 14th Amendment’s equal-protection clause, which is the same basis upon which several federal courts have blocked laws in Arizona,…