The Department of Education will escalate its crackdown on public schools for purported Title IX violations through a newly created “Title IX Special Investigations Team” with investigators from the Department of Justice, Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced on Friday.
“From day one, the Trump Administration has prioritized enforcing Title IX to protect female students and athletes,” McMahon said in a statement. “To all the entities that continue to allow men to compete in women’s sports and use women’s intimate facilities: there’s a new sheriff in town. We will not allow you to get away with denying women’s civil rights any longer.”
The newly created team will consist of attorneys and investigators from both agencies and will tackle what McMahon called an “ever-increasing volume of Title IX investigations.”
McMahon added that this administration has worked to complete investigations “faster than it ever has.” Investigations that normally take months, even years to complete, are being expedited, the department previously told NOTUS, to “ensure even more rapid and consistent investigations.”
The investigations team comes just weeks after the Department of Education initiated a reduction in force that slashed the department in half, resulting in the termination of more than 200 Office of Civil Rights attorneys and the closure of over half a dozen regional civil rights offices.
As the Trump administration takes steps to dismantle the Department of Education and shrink its influence over states, OCR has simultaneously cracked down on schools for purported Title IX violations, threatening to revoke funding for any perceived non-compliance.
Under Trump, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has self-initiated an unprecedented number of civil rights investigations into public education institutions, for issues ranging from gender-neutral bathrooms to “men competing in women’s sports.”
Instead of investigations based on complaints from parents or students, the department has been identifying schools largely based on complaints from outside organizations or, in at least one case, a local news story about a bathroom change — which they claim may violate Title IX rules and Trump’s executive orders.
Denver Public Schools is the subject of one such investigation after converting one girls’ restroom into a gender-neutral restroom after students requested the change, according to school administrators.
Scott Pribble, a spokesperson for the school district, told NOTUS a local news story is what put the district on the Department of Education’s radar. He said that the Department of Education had requested documents in connection with the investigation, but no OCR attorneys or investigators had visited the district as of Thursday.
“According to their initial letter to DPS, their ‘investigation will examine whether the District discriminates against students on the basis of sex by installing multi-stall all-gender restrooms in District school facilities, in violation of Title IX and its implementing regulations,’” Pribble said.
In another investigation into the Maine Department of Education and the Maine School District, roughly a month elapsed between the agency announcing it was opening an investigation and closing the probe. The Department of Education said it reached its conclusions in its investigations against Maine using “publicly available information, with no contrary facts presented by MDOE during this investigation.”
When asked whether investigators interviewed any state education officials, the Maine Department of Education referred NOTUS to Maine’s attorney general, who did not respond to requests for comment. In February, Gov. Janet Mills said “the outcome of this politically directed investigation is all but predetermined.”
Multiple Trump administration agencies have launched separate Title IX investigations into Maine schools. The Department of Health and Human Services announced last week it referred its investigation to the Department of Justice, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture froze funds to the state based on trans athletes participating in sports.
The Department of Education announced on Thursday that it would be requiring schools to certify that they’ve eliminated DEI programs, or risk losing federal funding.
While directed investigations are a normal part of OCR’s process, attorneys impacted by the RIF told NOTUS that the way they’re using the directed investigations process is highly abnormal.
“I can’t emphasize enough how alarming it is to me and other OCR attorneys that Acting Secretary Craig Trainor is just making statements that make it seem like institutions have already violated the law when they’re opening up the investigations and when they’re doing the press releases,” said Brittany Coleman, American Federation of Government Employees Local 252’s national shop steward. “I’ve never seen anyone make those assertions like that, because that’s not our job.”
Johnathan Smith, a lawyer with the National Center for Youth Law, which is suing the Trump administration for its RIFs at the Education Department’s civil rights offices, argued that the department’s focus on these directed investigations will almost certainly hamper the OCR’s ability to investigate and resolve civil rights and accessibility complaints from students — something his organization alleges in their suit violates statutory requirements of the OCR, and also the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.
“To be clear, administrations have the right to have priorities,” he said. “The problem is not when you have priorities. It’s where you kind of cross the line from priorities, to saying, one bucket [of complaints] is legitimate, and so therefore we’re going to actually move them forward, the other bucket is illegitimate, and we’re going to kind of kill them, or make them DOA.”
The department has launched more than 70 such investigations since Jan. 28. ProPublica reported that thousands of other pending complaints are on hold.
—
Violet Jira and Emily Kennard are NOTUS reporters and Allbritton Journalism Institute fellows.