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WASHINGTON, D.C. — America First Legal (AFL) has filed a federal civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, calling for an immediate investigation into Fairfax County Public Schools’ (FCPS) policies that unlawfully and deliberately conceal students’ “gender transition” records from parents.
AFL’s complaint explains how FCPS’s “Gender-Expansive and Transgender Students Guidance” directs school staff to:
Encourage and enable students to socially transition at school. Change students’ names, pronouns, and ‘gender identity.’ Maintain an internal record system documenting these ‘gender identity’ changes without parental notification or consent. Use a student’s legal name and “birth-assigned” pronouns when communicating with parents, even when the child has “socially transitioned” at school.
Federal law is clear: under the Family Educational and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Fourteenth Amendment, schools may not conceal students’ information from parents. FERPA guarantees parents the right to inspect and review their children’s education records. And courts have recognized that schools may not facilitate a child’s social transition in secret — or take affirmative steps to deceive parents and cut them out of critical educational and health-related decisions.
Notably, the Department of Education has already placed Fairfax County Public Schools on restricted status related to Title IX noncompliance, with related proceedings pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
AFL is calling on the Department of Education and the Department of Justice to investigate FCPS, require it to rescind policies that conceal student information from parents, restore parents’ full access to their children’s educational records, and come fully into compliance with federal law.
“FCPS has built a two-track system — one reality inside the school, and a sanitized version for parents. That is exactly the kind of deliberate concealment FERPA forbids,” said Ian Prior, Senior Counsel at America First Legal. “Federal officials must intervene to end this deception and restore parents’ rights.”
“Parents have the right to know what schools are doing with their children,” said Alice Kass, Attorney at America First Legal. “FCPS policy is to secretly manage social gender transitions, hide records, and mislead parents. Federal law explicitly prohibits schools from cutting parents out of their children’s lives.”
AFL will continue fighting for families, defending parental rights, and saving children from radical gender ideology.
Read the full complaint here.
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