The Trump administration just delivered a decisive win for parents across Kansas — and it’s sending a message to every school district in America that thinks it can hide children’s so-called gender transitions from moms and dads.
Under Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s leadership, the Department of Education announced Tuesday it forced the Topeka Public School District to end its gross violation of parental rights under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
The district can no longer create secret “gender support plans” for students. Every plan already in existence must now be shared with parents.
“By natural right and moral authority, parents are the primary protectors of their children.” — Education Secretary Linda McMahon
Previously, Topeka school leaders had instructed teachers to hide information about students’ claimed gender identities from their own parents. Trump’s Student Privacy Policy Office is now stepping into teacher training programs to ensure strict compliance with parental rights — and every policy that kept parents in the dark will be removed under threat of losing federal funding.
In March, McMahon sent letters to state superintendents nationwide reminding them of their legal obligations under federal privacy law. By April, the Department of Education exposed four Kansas school districts for allegedly violating federal law — each had policies allowing schools to conceal children’s gender transitions from parents.
Under those policies, children were allowed to use different names and pronouns without notifying parents, “even if the parent requested their child’s records.” In some cases, school diplomas were printed with the new names — blindsiding parents who had been intentionally left in the dark.
The Kansas districts were also allegedly violating Title IX by letting biological males into female restrooms, locker rooms, and sports teams based on claimed identities.
In June, the Office of Civil Rights issued an enforcement letter to four districts, giving them 10 days to comply with federal law.
Despite the Topeka district’s resolution, the Olathe and Shawnee Mission Public School Districts have reportedly refused to comply. The Department of Education announced it will pursue enforcement measures against them — potentially removing their federal funding.
Several states are still trying to derail Trump’s efforts. Both Washington and California have refused to provide updates on their compliance with federal privacy law. Both states appear to have continued hiding students’ claimed gender transitions from parents — even after the Supreme Court ruled in Mirabelli v. Bonta that parents have priority over public schools in raising their children.
This year alone, lawsuits over schools violating parental rights have cropped up in Michigan, Illinois, and Virginia.
Earlier this year, the Anne Arundel Public School system in Maryland was caught “secretly helping” a girl pretend to be male at school, referring to her by a different name and male pronouns. Parents only discovered the deception after receiving an email where she was called “he.”
In January, the Department of Education found a list of 300 students in California whom schools had placed on “gender support plans.” At the Skaneateles Central School District in New York, school staffers persuaded a seventh-grade girl to use different pronouns at school than at home. Her parents pulled her from the school — but officials continued meeting with her without parental knowledge.
For parents sending children back to school this fall, Trump’s action in Kansas is a victory worth celebrating — and replicating nationwide.
The left often claims trans-identifying students represent a tiny minority of any school’s population, but gender confusion in teenagers is typically the result of peer pressure and cultural encouragement. Kids usually first learn about it online, with platforms like TikTok and Instagram glamorizing the lifestyle.
For easily impressionable young people, it’s often easier to claim they were “born in the wrong body” than to deal with the discomfort of puberty. So they begin pretending to be the opposite sex in the one place they think their parents can’t see them: school.
When leftist teachers encourage students to change their gender, names, and pronouns, they give young people permission to deny reality. The social contagion can only be stopped when responsible adults interfere for the good of those young people.
Trump’s success in Kansas is a concrete example of adults in government doing just that. Federal privacy law was designed to protect families — whereas left-wing educators attempted to skirt it to divide families and foment lies.
Every school district in America should uphold transparency between students and their families and end the charade that school staffers have a greater right to a child than their parents do.
