California sues Trump admin over its demand to forcibly out trans students

The state of California has sued the U.S. Department of Education and the entire federal government over their threat to withhold funds totaling $4.9 billion annually because of the state law against forced outing of transgender students.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed the lawsuit Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. It challenges the Department of Education’s findings that the California Department of Education “facilitated and promoted the adoption of policies and practices that violate” the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

FERPA, a federal law enacted more than 50 years ago, requires states to disclose students’ education records to their parents upon request and bars them from disclosing those records to third parties without prior parental consent. But the law “does not require schools to affirmatively disclose a student’s gender identity or preferred name or pronouns to parents, nor does it mention gender identity,” says a press release from Bonta’s office.

Related: Conservative Californians ask SCOTUS to allow forced outing of transgender students

The U.S. DOE sent a letter to the California DOE last March, saying it was initiating an investigation into whether local educational agencies were violating FERPA. The investigation came at the behest of the California Justice Center, a nonprofit group that bills its mission as fighting government “overreach.”

The investigation “focuses on a select set of education records for just one group of students — transgender students — and specifically records about their gender identity,” the lawsuit says. “This singular focus appears, like so many of Defendants’ actions, to be motivated by discriminatory animus against transgender people, including transgender students.”

The California DOE has made it clear that parents have the right to request to inspect and review their children’s education records under FERPA, even if those records contain information related to a student’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression, the press release says. The agency sent a letter to the U.S. DOE stating that the California law, Assembly Bill 1955, “only prohibits schools and school districts from compelling staff to affirmatively disclose without a student’s consent,” the lawsuit notes.

Related: California defies Trump, won't ban trans athletes from school sports

AB 1955, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law in 2024, made California the first state to ban forced outing of trans and other LGBTQ+ students. The law is designed to protect students whose parents or guardians are not supportive of their identity.

But one of the defendants, U.S. DOE official Frank Miller, claims the law recognizes “a nonexistent right of privacy in minors from their parents regarding a child’s gender identity at school,” using the same language as the California Justice Center.

Last month, the U.S. DOE sent a letter to the California DOE demanding that it take six “corrective actions,” including an assurance that school districts will be allowed to employ “pro-parental notification approaches,” the suit says. If the state does not comply, it will lose all federal funding, according to the U.S. DOE.

But California is not “out of substantial compliance with FERPA,” the suit says. “Indeed, Defendants have failed to demonstrate even a single violation of FERPA: they do not cite even one instance in which any [local educational agency] failed to disclose education records that state a student’s gender identity — or any other record — in response to a valid parental request under FERPA.”

What’s more, “he loss of all $4.9 billion in funding would have a catastrophic impact for California’s education system,” the lawsuit states.

The defendants are exceeding their legal authority by seeking to force disclosure of “education records related to a student’s gender identity to a student’s parents where the parents have not made any request for education records,” “information, materials, or documents related to gender identity that fall outside of an ‘education record’” as defined by FERPA,” and “records related to a student’s gender identity in response to an inquiry from parents that does not constitute a valid request under FERPA,” according to the suit.

It asks the court to declare that the “corrective actions” demanded are not supported by law and to issue preliminary and permanent injunctions keeping the federal government from withholding funds or making similar demands.

Named as defendants are the U.S. DOE; Secretary of Education Linda McMahon; Miller, who is director of the student privacy policy office of the U.S. DOE; and all U.S. executive agencies and departments. Donald Trump claimed last year that he would shut down the U.S. DOE, something conservatives have wanted ever since the department was established, but it's still very much in operation, at least as far as being weaponized against trans-inclusive policies.

“This is a flagrant attempt by the U.S. Department of Education to intimidate the California Department of Education and California’s local education agencies under the guise of enforcing FERPA,” Bonta said in the press release. “The Trump Administration has produced no evidence that CDE is out of substantial compliance with FERPA, or even a single instance where a school has failed to honor a parent’s request for student records. We will not stand by as U.S. ED uses baseless claims to attack crucial education funding. We will continue to fight to protect California’s schools and students from unfair attacks and work to ensure a discrimination-free educational environment for all students.”