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New York City Public Schools filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education on Thursday over its move to cut $47 million in promised grants in response to the schools’ policies regarding transgender students.
The lawsuit asks for the reversal of the move to pull the grants.
City officials said the federal agency stripped funding without the required notice or hearing, after it concluded that school policies allowing transgender students to participate on sports teams and use bathrooms matching their gender identity rather than biological sex violate Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in education.
Last month, the Department of Education gave New York City Public Schools a Sept. 23 deadline to amend the policies or lose current and future funding for 19 specialty magnet schools.
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Under the policies, “male students who identify as female or transgender are given unqualified access to female intimate spaces,” Craig Trainor, the acting assistant secretary for civil rights at the agency, said in a letter.
Several other school districts, including in Chicago and Fairfax County, Virginia, received similar letters.
New York City school officials affirm that they are fully compliant with Title IX and that the federal department’s “novel interpretation” contradicts state and city laws against sex-based discrimination.
“U.S. DOE’s threat to cut off tens of millions of dollars in magnet funding unless we canceled our protections for transgender and gender expansive students is contrary to federal, state, and local law and, just as importantly, our values as New York City Public Schools,” Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos said in a news release.
An Education Department spokesperson said the agency “sees no merit in this lawsuit.”
The spokesperson added that the magnet school grant program “requires certification of civil rights compliance, which we could obviously not do in the face of NYC’s continued determination to violate the rights of female students under Title IX.”
Under the Trump administration, federal officials have sought to target school districts for policies allowing students to use bathrooms or participate on sports teams that correspond with their gender identity.
Additionally, New York State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa ordered a school district in the New York City suburbs this week to temporarily abandon its new bathroom restrictions for transgender students.
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The Massapequa School District implemented a policy last month prohibiting transgender students from using bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identities rather than biological sex.
The district said after the commissioner’s order that it will continue to offer a gender-neutral locker room and bathroom option to “any student who will be more comfortable using such a space.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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