The Trump administration is moving forward with a threat to withhold over $3 million in grant funding for Fairfax County’s public magnet schools.
The U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights gave Fairfax County Public Schools and districts in Chicago and New York City until Tuesday (Sept. 23) to agree to stop giving students access to locker rooms and restrooms corresponding with their gender identity or risk losing funding for specialty magnet schools.
In letters to the districts Sept. 16, the Education Department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, Craig Trainor, said the practice violates Title IX, which forbids discrimination based on sex in education. Because the districts did not agree by Tuesday to take remedial action detailed in Trainor’s letters, the department said, Trainor will not certify that they are in compliance with federal civil rights law, making them ineligible for the grants.
Fairfax County schools will lose $3.4 million in Magnet School Assistance Program funding in the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. FCPS has three magnet schools: Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology and elementary-level programs in Bailey’s Crossroads and Reston that offer specialized arts and science education.
About $5.8 million will be withheld from Chicago schools and community school districts in New York City will lose about $15 million, according to the Education Department.
U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a tweet on Sept. 17 that the department won’t certify grant applications from the school systems, arguing that they’re “clearly not” following the law.
“The Department will not rubber-stamp civil rights compliance for New York, Chicago, and Fairfax while they blatantly discriminate against students based on race and sex,” Education Department spokesperson Julie Hartman told the Associated Press via email. “These are public schools, funded by hardworking American families, and parents have every right to expect an excellent education — not ideological indoctrination masquerading as ‘inclusive’ policy.”
FCPS said in a statement that it is “currently reviewing and researching the potential impact” of the funding denial “as many of these are multiyear grants.”
School leaders have argued that complying with the Trump administration’s demands that they rescind policies supporting transgender students would require them to violate federal and state laws based on existing court rulings.
FCPS sued the Education Department in August in a bid to restore $167 million that the Trump administration froze after the school district declined to change its policy governing bathroom and locker room access.
Jointly filed with Arlington Public Schools, the lawsuit was dismissed earlier this month by a federal judge, who stated that his court lacked the authority to weigh in on federal funding allocations.
FCPS subsequently appealed the case to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which previously ruled in the 2020 case Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board that Title IX’s protections against discrimination extend to gender identity.
According to FCPS, the $167 million being restricted by the Education Department would go toward free and reduced-price meals, special education, programs to improve academic achievement, professional development for teachers, and other critical services.
