Governor Glenn Youngkin has announced that the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights found the gender policies of five Northern Virginia school divisions to be in violation of Title IX. The school divisions involved are Fairfax County, Loudoun County, Arlington County, Prince William County, and the City of Alexandria. These policies allowed students access to facilities and participation in sports based on gender identity rather than biological sex.
“These school divisions have been violating federal law, deliberately neglecting their responsibility to protect students’ safety, privacy and dignity, and ignoring parents’ rights. They got away with this behavior because the Biden Administration backed them up. Commonsense is back, with biological boys and girls in their own locker rooms and bathrooms, and boys out of girls sports,” said Governor Glenn Youngkin.
Attorney General Jason Miyares expressed his stance against the previous administration’s Title IX re-interpretation: “I fought to prevent the Biden Administration’s radical Title IX re-interpretation from being imposed on Virginia’s public schools.” He added that he is encouraged by the federal government’s current cooperation in restoring traditional practices in public education.
The Department of Education reported issues such as students avoiding restrooms due to discomfort with policies and inappropriate incidents occurring within locker rooms. As a result, a proposed Resolution Agreement requires these divisions to rescind existing policies that allow access based on gender identity and adopt biology-based definitions for male and female terms.
The Office for Civil Rights has given these school divisions ten days to comply voluntarily or face enforcement actions which could involve referral to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Several incidents were highlighted as examples of policy violations across these districts. In Arlington Public Schools, a male offender was reported using a girl’s locker room under transgender identification claims. Fairfax County faced legal challenges from America First Legal over its bathroom policies conflicting with religious beliefs. Loudoun County had investigations related to inappropriate recordings in locker rooms and past sexual assault cases linked to policy interpretations.
Prince William County regulations allowed access based on gender identity while Alexandria City Public Schools provided single-user facilities for uncomfortable students but required minimizing instructional time loss.
