Denver Public Schools Superintendent Alex Marrero issued a defiant statement Friday in response to what he called the Trump administration’s “anti-trans agenda,” but stopped short of saying whether the district will comply with the federal government’s demand to rid schools of gender-neutral bathrooms.
“The Trump administration, through the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, continues to push its anti-trans agenda through the weaponization of Title IX, a federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex,” Marrero said in the statement.
“To our LGBTQ+ students, families and supporters, we see you, and we will not stand for these attempts at your erasure,” he added. “We will protect all of our students from this hostile administration while we continue to raise the bar on achievement.”
Marrero issued the statement a day after the Office for Civil Rights declared that DPS had violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and discriminated against girls by creating a gender-neutral bathroom at East High School and adopting a districtwide policy that allows students to use restrooms based on their gender identities.
The superintendent flatly denied that the district’s all-gender restrooms violate Title IX.
The federal agency gave DPS 10 days to agree to a proposed resolution, which included the requirement that the district convert any all-gender restrooms back to single-sex facilities or risk an unspecified enforcement action.
“While OCR’s letter of findings declares that DPS violated Title IX, they cite no binding authority that would make multi-stall all-gender restrooms unlawful,” Marrero said in his statement.
Marrero did not say directly whether DPS will comply with the resolution proposed by the Office for Civil Rights. Spokesman Scott Pribble said DPS leaders are “still weighing our options” when asked if the district will convert all-gender bathrooms back into separate girl and boy facilities.
The superintendent also took the Office for Civil Rights to task for how the investigation was conducted, claiming that the agency didn’t visit the bathroom at East High or interview witnesses. The department also declined DPS officials’ requests for conversation and mediation, Marrero said.
“This is unprecedented behavior from an OCR we no longer recognize,” he said.
The Office of Civil Rights began its investigation earlier this year after East High converted a girls bathroom into a multi-stall, gender-neutral restroom. In response to the investigation, DPS turned a boys bathroom into a second all-gender restroom this year.
The Office for Civil Rights said in its statement Thursday that the new bathroom “does not remedy its violation of Title IX because males are still allowed to invade sensitive female-only facilities.”
Two other DPS schools — the Denver School of the Arts and the Career Educational Center Early College — have a gender-neutral bathroom on their campus.
The East High investigation began soon after Trump was inaugurated to his second term; his administration has repeatedly threatened to pull funding from K-12 school districts for what the federal government calls discriminatory policies, such as those that relate to gender identity, the LGBTQ community and race.
DPS has also gone head-to-head with the Trump administration over the federal government’s immigration practices, with the district suing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in an effort to prevent arrests from occurring on school property.
The district dropped that lawsuit in June after a federal judge declined its request for a preliminary injunction to block immigration officers from going on school property.
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