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The U.S. Education Department is threatening to cut funding to two school districts in Maryland and Michigan over its policies surrounding protected information about students’ gender identity not being disclosed to parents.
In a partnership with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the Education Department’s Student Privacy Policy Office (SPPO) announced it will be taking action against Anne Arundel County for its classification of “gender identity” as “classified medical information.” It said in a press release Monday that the school failed to disclose details about a student’s “gender transition” when the parents approached the school regarding their child. The release argued that this violated the rights guaranteed to the parents by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).
FERPA gives families the legal right to access all of their children’s education records. It has been used to strike down state policies California and Maine that did not allow parents to access their child’s gender identity records. In March 2025, the SPPO sent a “Dear Colleague Letter” to state superintendents to remind them about FERPA requirements and obligations. It specifically emphasized its disproval for the practice of hiding students’ gender identities, a primary concern for the agency.
“FERPA is not optional, and any districts that attempt to bypass or distort its requirements should expect immediate federal action,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon in the statement.
The press release also alleged that Ann Arbor Public Schools’s policy to not allow faculty to disclose the status of any students’ gender identity to their parents also violated FERPA. The school district is also under investigation for separating student records relating to gender identity to a different filing system.
The Education Department is threatening “applicable judicial proceedings and potential loss of federal funding” for Anne Arundel School District but will give Ann Arbor School District until Aug. 10 to “demonstrate why ED and DOJ should not move forward with enforcement.”
“Today, ED and DOJ are putting districts on notice that we will use every tool available to hold them to account for this egregious behavior,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in the release.
“Under the Trump Administration, ED and DOJ are working together to vigorously uphold parents’ federal protections, and we will work to ensure that no parent is ever kept in the dark about important matters relating to their children,” she continued.
In a statement cited by an NBC affiliate, Anne Arundel County Public Schools said it found out about the Education Department’s accusations through the press release. It argued it had not received any formal correspondence or evidence from the agency to support the Education Department’s findings.
The accusations follow a Supreme Court case where the court blocked a California policy that attempted to ban automatic notifications if a student changes their gender identity.
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