LGBTQ+ rights advocates are bracing for what Donald Trump’s return to the White House could mean for transgender students in K-12 schools under a Department of Education that is likely to target them.
Advocacy groups say that while President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to eliminate the Department of Education is far-fetched, there’s plenty he could do to obstruct how the department’s Office for Civil Rights investigates complaints of discrimination and harassment from transgender students as soon as he enters office.
Anti-trans attacks were a key part of Republican messaging in the 2024 election, stirring fears that the transgender community will be under fire as the party takes control of Washington. But they’re not just looking at the campaign rhetoric as an indicator of how Trump’s Department of Education will treat transgender students: They’re also looking at the last time he was president.
“The Trump administration didn’t dismantle the Department of Education during its first term, but even so, it was able to really back off on effective enforcement of the law as related to LGBTQ folks,” Cathryn Oakley, the senior director of legal policy for the Human Rights Campaign, told NOTUS. “And I certainly think that we should expect the Trump administration will make that similar choice the second time.”
Among advocates’ concerns is a worry that Title IX, which protects students in educational programs that receive federal funding against discrimination based on sex, will not be enforced in a way that protects transgender students.
The civil rights office within the Department of Education handles thousands of sexual harassment, bullying and discrimination complaints each school year. It was implemented after Congress passed the 1979 Department of Education Organization Act, which created the department and transferred education-related civil rights issues to it. The Office for Civil Rights has since been used as a tool to handle discrimination, harassment and other civil rights complaints involving K-12 students.
But, that doesn’t mean that Trump can’t influence the process.
“What he can do with the administration, which we saw in his prior tenure as president, is not staff up to the level that they need to effectively investigate cases that are being brought to the Office for Civil Rights, or he could pick and choose what cases he wants to investigate,” Wil Del Pilar, the senior vice president at EdTrust, said. “And so I do think we can see a significant decline in protection specifically for LGBTQ students.”
The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment on how it plans to navigate complaints brought to the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights by transgender students. But in January 2023, Trump announced his intention to revoke Joe Biden’s policies on gender-affirming care and change Title IX to prevent transgender athletes from participating in school sports. He also referenced plans to use the Department of Education to enforce new restrictions on teachers’ discussion of gender transition in classrooms.
“My department of education will inform states and school districts that if any teacher or school official suggest to a child that they could be trapped in the wrong body, they will be faced with severe consequences, including potential civil rights violations for sex discrimination and the elimination of federal funding,” Trump said in a video.
Project 2025, which is The Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a second Trump term, also has proposals aimed at this, including one to “begin a full review of all Title IX investigations that were conducted on the understanding that ‘sex’ referred to gender identity and/or sexual orientation.”
During Trump’s first term, the civil rights office declined to investigate complaints about bathroom bans that leave transgender students without access to bathrooms that match their gender identity. It was a change from Obama-era guidance, and transgender rights advocates argued that the Trump policy led to the embarrassment and bullying of those students.
LGBTQ+ complaints were “more than nine times less likely to result in corrective action” under the Trump administration than they were under the Obama administration, according to a 2019 analysis from the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. And then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was criticized by Washington Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, a former chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, for using the office’s lack of staffing and resources as a reason to “roll back” civil rights protections and investigations.
More recently, Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee have proposed “significant cuts” to the subcommittee responsible for handling the Department of Education, which could impact the resources available for the Office for Civil Rights to conduct investigations.
Given their past experience of pushing back against the Trump administration, LGBTQ+ rights advocates are arguing that it’s worth preparing extensively for as many scenarios as possible.
“If we take him at his word and we begin fighting now to ensure that he’s not able to do anything he’s outlined, then we’ll be at least on a better footing,” Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, the executive director of the LGBTQ+ advocacy group GLSEN, told NOTUS.
These advocates aren’t struggling to find examples of the types of investigations that they hope would continue.
Under the Biden administration, for example, the Office for Civil Rights launched an investigation into Owasso Public Schools in Oklahoma following the death of Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old nonbinary student who died by suicide in February, a day after a fight in a girl’s high school bathroom.
In November, the office announced the district failed to take proper steps after Benedict’s death and said it found “repeated instances over a three-year period” where Owasso Public Schools staff didn’t follow procedure after receiving notices of “possible sexual harassment.” Owasso Public Schools signed a voluntary resolution agreement with steps to ensure that all students receive their rights under Title IX. After entering the agreement, the school district said in a letter that “we continue to believe the original complaint made to OCR was based on inaccurate information.”
Advocates who watch these issues closely don’t believe that the civil rights office would conduct a similar investigation under Trump’s watch.
“Investigations like those of the Office for Civil Rights matter only as much as our willingness and ability to witness them and take action on their findings,” Grace Fallon and Twilight Savage, representatives from the Transgender Advocacy Coalition of Oklahoma, told NOTUS in a statement. “This has hardly been the case under the Biden administration, and we can expect even less visibility and less consequence under a Trump presidency (should the office even continue to exist).”
Advocates agree that Trump’s Department of Education will only worsen the problem. The Associated Press reported that transgender youth are already flooding crisis hotlines since the election.
“We all know that the person who was just elected as president does not actually believe that there is a problem with sexual harassment or discrimination on the basis of gender,” Willingham-Jaggers said. “I am under no misconception that in this role, Donald Trump would direct anyone on his staff to ensure that sexual harassment, sexual assault discrimination on the basis of sex or gender would be a thing that would be seen as a problem.”
—
Torrence Banks is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.