The announced Thursday that it found had discriminated against girls by creating a gender-neutral bathroom at East High School and adopting a districtwide policy that allows students to use facilities that correspond with their gender identities.
The department’s said DPS violated and gave the district 10 days to agree to a proposed resolution — which includes converting all-gender restrooms back to single-sex facilities — or “risk imminent enforcement action.”
However, attorneys who specialize in Title IX said the Trump administration was misapplying the landmark civil rights law in its targeting of DPS.
The Education Department announced in January that it was investigating DPS after East High created the bathroom last academic year by converting a girls restroom into a bathroom for all genders.
“The district is creating a hostile environment for its students by endangering their safety, privacy and dignity while denying them access to equal educational activities and opportunities,” Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said in a statement Thursday. “Denver is free to endorse a self-defeating gender ideology, but it is not free to accept federal taxpayer funds and harm its students in violation of Title IX.”
DPS spokesman Scott Pribble said the district had just received the findings from the Office for Civil Rights and “is determining our next steps.” District officials have previously defended the all-gender restroom at East High, saying its creation was student-led and is an inclusive space.
The district has since created a second gender-neutral restroom at East High, and operates two other all-gender facilities — at the Denver School of the Arts and the Career Educational Center Early College.
Threats to cut K-12 funding
The Office of Civil Rights asked DPS to agree to the department’s resolution agreement or face unspecified enforcement action. The agreement requires the district to convert all multi-stall, gender-neutral bathrooms in any DPS school back into separate female or male facilities.
The agreement requires DPS to rescind any district policies or guidance that allow students to access restrooms based on their gender identity. The district would also have to “adopt biology-based definitions for the words ‘male’ and ‘female’ in all policies and practices related to Title IX,” according to a news release.
DPS would be required to issue a memo to schools that says they must provide bathrooms that “protect the privacy, dignity and safety of (their) students and are comparably accessible to each sex,” according to the proposed agreement.
The Trump administration has repeatedly threatened to cut K-12 funding from school districts with policies that the federal government calls discriminatory, especially those that relate to gender identity, the LGBTQ community and race.
DPS, the state’s largest school district, received as much as $96 million in federal grant funding for the 2024-25 academic year.
The district’s Board of Education voted in 2020 to require every school in the district to provide at least one all-gender bathroom in its buildings.
The Office for Civil Rights said in a news release Thursday that both the East High bathrooms and the district’s policy allowing students to use a facility based on their gender identity rather than biological sex violated Title IX by discriminating against students on the basis of sex.
Under Title IX, schools and other organizations that receive federal funds may provide separate toilet and locker rooms based on sex, but the facilities must be comparable to those offered to students of the opposite sex.
Using Title IX as ‘tool for exclusion’
Title IX was created to allow girls and women to participate in educational activities in school, including sports, without sexual harassment, said Dan Williams, an attorney with in Boulder.
“To turn that law on its head, to use it as a tool for exclusion for transpeople is just an abomination,” he said.
The Office of Civil Rights’ finding doesn’t prevent a student from filing a lawsuit against DPS under Title IX if the district does get rid of multi-stall, all-gender bathrooms through an agreement with the Trump administration, said Ashlyn Hare, an attorney with in Boulder.
“(The Office of Civil Rights’) decision in this case is inconsistent with this law and advancing the political stance of the Trump administration — not enforcing Title IX as it has been written or applied,” she said.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in in 2020 that discrimination on the basis of gender identity is the same as discrimination on the basis of sex, Hare said.
East High created the gender-neutral bathroom after students asked administrators for another facility. The school converted a girls bathroom into an all-gender facility — a decision district officials said was made because it was more cost-effective and didn’t require the need to remove urinals from the boys bathroom.
The all-gender bathroom has stalls that offer more privacy than other facilities, with 12-foot walls that almost reach the ceiling and metal blocks that prevent people from seeing through.
East High recently transformed a boys bathroom into a second all-gender restroom, a move the district said it made in response to the federal government’s investigation and to address any disparity.
But the Office for Civil Rights said the new bathroom “does not remedy its violation of Title IX because males are still allowed to invade sensitive female-only facilities.”
