The Trump administration filed a novel lawsuit in Kansas on Tuesday, accusing Kansas City Public Schools of allowing a policy to stand that, if implemented, would allow children to “socially transition” at school to a gender identity other than their biological sex while withholding that information from parents.
The Justice Department called the case a “first-of-its-kind” lawsuit. The Department of Education is asking a court to block the school district’s internal transgender-student guidance — identified in the complaint as the district’s “Transgender Guidance” — which the government said violated federal laws protecting parents’ access to their children’s school records and requiring consent for certain sensitive student evaluations.
“Parental rights are paramount in the operation of America’s public schools, and Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools does not know children better than their own parents,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon said in a statement. “The Department will not tolerate school districts playing fast and loose with federal law in the service of radical gender ideology.”
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas, alleges that the district’s policy enables staff members to develop “Gender Plans” for students without a parent’s knowledge or consent. The lawsuit followed a determination by the Department of Education on July 1 that the district was out of substantial compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA. The Department of Education reached the same conclusion under the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment on Aug. 25.
The district’s guidance directs staff members who learn that a student identifies as transgender or “gender nonconforming” to alert the school principal. It says a planning meeting may cover a student’s preferred name, preferred gender, preferred pronouns, school records, locker room and restroom use, sports participation, field trips, and staff training.
Parents are listed among the people who may attend the meeting. But the policy says a student’s request to exclude a parent, or not disclose the student’s claimed transgender status to a parent, “will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.”
The policy says district officials should consider the student’s age, grade level, welfare, and other relevant information when deciding whether to withhold the information from parents.
The federal complaint argues that those procedures can deny parents access to education records created through the process. It also alleges that district meetings and evaluations involving a student’s claimed gender identity can reveal sensitive information without the written parental consent required under the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment.
It further seeks a court order stopping enforcement of the guidance, requiring the district to give parents a chance to challenge or correct information in their children’s records, and requiring written consent before any covered student evaluation.
“This lawsuit should not come as a surprise,” U.S. Attorney Ryan A. Kriegshauser said. “Public education functions effectively only when schools and parents engage in a genuine partnership. When schools withhold information from parents, they undermine trust and disrupt the essential balance between families and public educators.”
While the school district told the Education Department last year that its policy was “irrelevant because the board of education ‘never adopted, approved, or utilized’” it, the complaint says the district maintained versions of the guidance since at least 2017. The DOJ alleges the district nonetheless implemented a substantially similar internal guideline, with the current version “in use since 2024.”
The Washington Examiner contacted KCPS for comment.
The Kansas lawsuit arrives as the Supreme Court prepares to hear a separate parental-rights case from Washington state in its upcoming fall term.
In the case known as International Partners for Ethical Care, Inc. v. Ferguson, the justices will consider whether parents have standing to challenge the state’s law, which currently allows officials to delay notice and reunification when a “runaway minor” seeks gender-related drugs or surgeries. That case does not directly scrutinize a school district’s social-transition policy, but relates back to the national legal fight involving parents seeking to sue officials if they have been left in the dark about life-altering decisions affecting their children.
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Earlier this year, the Supreme Court allowed a block on California’s school secret-transition policy to take effect while that litigation proceeds. The justices separately declined to hear challenges to similar school policies in Massachusetts and Florida.
A federal judge in March ordered California to pay $4.52 million in attorney fees to parents and teachers who challenged that state’s secret-transition policy, the Washington Examiner previously reported.