The administration is giving the district ten days to revert the all-gender restrooms back to single-sex restrooms.
The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) announced today that Denver Public Schools violated Title IX after the school implemented two all-gender restrooms — one last year, replacing a women’s restroom, and one this school year, replacing a men’s restroom.
Denver Public Schools also has an “LGBTQ+ Toolkit,” which includes policies that allow students to use whichever restrooms align with a student’s preferred gender identity, another policy that OCR found violated Title IX regulations.
“Denver Public Schools violated Title IX and its implementing regulations by converting a sex-segregated restroom designated for girls in East High School to an ‘all-gender’ facility and by allowing students to use the high school’s intimate facilities on the basis of their ‘gender identity’ rather than their biological sex,” Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said in a statement. “As a result, 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.”
The OCR is giving Denver Public Schools ten days to comply with a proposed “Resolution Agreement,” in light of the noncompliance finding.
Under the proposed agreement, the district must revert the all-gender restrooms back to single-sex restrooms, rescind policies that allow students to select their restrooms based on gender identity, send a memo throughout the district to promise schools will ensure Title IX compliance, and finally, use biology-based definitions of “male” and “female” in all Title IX-related policies.
“The school received several complaints, including from a female student who reported that when her friend used the restroom, ‘boys kept staring at her, looking her up and down, kind of taunting her,'” the OCR press release reads.
The noncompliance finding comes after OCR began an investigation into Denver Public Schools in January. At that time, a female restroom was designated as all-gender, which the administration found to be an act of discrimination against female students. National Review reported that the district’s solution was to designate a men’s restroom as all-gender as well, and ultimately, OCR determined the school district was still in violation of Title IX.
“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. The Trump Administration will work relentlessly to hold accountable school districts that harbor the ideological fanatics and policies that sully students’ educational experience with sex discrimination,” Trainor said.