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By Melanie Asmar/Chalkbeat
Seven months after the Trump administration began investigating Denver Public Schools for converting a girls’ restroom at East High School into an all-gender one, the school started classes this week with a new addition: another all-gender restroom.
The new all-gender restroom was formerly a boys’ restroom. DPS added it after officials with the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights said in January that converting a girls’ restroom into an all-gender restroom “denied female students a restroom comparable with their male counterparts” and violated the civil rights of Denver’s female students.
DPS said in a statement that the new restroom was meant to address any disparity.
“The addition of a second all-gender restroom on the same floor as the first restroom was suggested and paid for by the District to help address the notion of any unfairness or lack of parity across facilities,” the statement from DPS said.
“Students will continue to have access to gender-specific restrooms as well as existing single-stall gender-neutral bathrooms throughout the school,” the statement said.
The district said it “remains responsive” to information requests from the Office for Civil Rights.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Education said the Office for Civil Rights’ investigation into DPS is ongoing. The spokesperson did not answer a question about whether the district’s conversion of a boys’ restroom into an all-gender restroom nullifies the alleged discrimination.
The Trump administration has taken aim at policies meant to protect transgender students. On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Education found that five northern Virginia school districts were violating the federal Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination, by allowing students to use restrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity.
All federal funding for those districts — a total of more than $50 million — will now be distributed by reimbursement only, meaning the districts will have to pay those expenses up front.
In a statement, U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the Virginia districts were being penalized for “choosing to abide by woke gender ideology in place of federal law.”
Nearly 7% of Denver Public Schools’ budget last year, or about $96 million, was made up of federal funding, according to district budget documents.
The Trump administration began investigating DPS shortly after the president’s inauguration. A letter from federal officials to Superintendent Alex Marrero cited a January 9News story about East High converting a girls’ restroom into an all-gender restroom.
At the time, DPS said it was “unprecedented” for the Office for Civil Rights to initiate an investigation based on a news story. The district defended East High’s all-gender restroom, saying it was added at the request of students and has 12-foot-tall partitions to ensure privacy.
Kayleigh Baker, an attorney and senior consultant with TNG Consulting and an advisory board member of the Association of Title IX Administrators, said many school districts are caught between their own inclusive policies and interpretations of the law and the Trump administration’s new interpretation of Title IX. The courts may ultimately decide whose interpretation prevails.
Baker said she doesn’t believe that simply having an all-gender restroom violates the law, but she’s not sure that converting a boys’ restroom along with a girls’ restroom would satisfy the Trump administration, which has emphasized protecting access to single-sex restrooms.
“My concern would be taking something away, whether that’s a girls’ restroom or a boys’ and a girls’ restroom,” she said.
But Scott Skinner-Thompson, an associate professor of law at the University of Colorado Boulder who focuses on LGBTQ issues, said he thinks converting both boys’ and girls’ restrooms into all-gender restrooms weakens the Trump administration’s discrimination claim — which he believes was legally weak to begin with.
“Title IX has never required identical facilities. It’s only ever required comparable facilities,” he said. “Creating an all-gender restroom doesn’t exclude anyone.”
Chalkbeat National Editor Erica Meltzer contributed to this report.
Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at [email protected].
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
