Denver Public Schools Faces Federal Sanctions Over Inclusive Restroom Policy

By: Óscar Contreras | Denver7

The Department of Education found Denver Public Schools violated Title IX by converting a girl’s restroom into an all-gender facility earlier this year.

DENVER — Trump’s Department of Education ordered Denver Public Schools to revert all-gender restrooms to single-sex facilities or risk “enforcement action” after finding it discriminated against girls by creating all-gender bathrooms at East High School earlier this year.

The investigation, launched by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights in January of this year, also took issue with a district-wide policy that allows students to use bathrooms that align with their gender identity.

By converting a girl’s restroom to a gender-neutral facility and allowing students to use bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity, 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,” said Craig Trainor, the department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights 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,” Trainor added.

The federal government office gave Denver Public Schools 10 days to agree to a proposed resolution – which includes converting all-gender restrooms back to multi-stall, single-sex facilities and adopt “biology-based definitions for the words ‘male’ and ‘female’” – or risk “imminent enforcement action.”

Per our partners at The Denver Post, DPS received as much as $96 million in federal grant funding for the 2024-25 school year.

Earlier this week, DPS spokesman Scott Pribble told Denver7 the district had recently converted a boy’s bathroom into an all-gender facility on the same floor where the girl’s bathroom was converted “to help address the notion of any unfairness or lack of parity across facilities” as a result of the federal government’s investigation earlier this year.

But an official with Office of Civil Rights said Thursday that converting the boy’s bathroom into a gender-neutral facility “does not remedy its violation of Title IX because males are still allowed to invade sensitive female-only facilities.”

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT DENVER7