Trump Admin Sues School District For Clandestine Student Gender Transitions

By Christine Sellers

The Trump Administration is suing a public school district in Kansas City, Kansas, over secret gender transitions for students, which violate the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).

Unified School District No. 500 has had a policy for transgender and gender non-conforming students in place since 2017, pressuring school officials to use students’ preferred names and pronouns, according to the complaint. Under the same policy, school officials must evaluate gender transitions on a case-by-case basis if a student does not want to involve their parents.

The policy violates FERPA, which gives parents the right to access and review their children’s education records; it also violates the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA), which protects students from disclosing information about sensitive topics such as religious practices or sexual behavior on surveys or instructional materials.

The lawsuit follows an Aug. 2025 Education Department investigation into Topeka Public Schools, Shawnee Public Schools, Olathe Public Schools, and Kansas City Public Schools following a complaint from the Defense of Freedom Institute alleging the schools were allowing students to compete in sports based on their gender identity without disclosing their “transgender status” to their parents.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon reacted to the lawsuit in a Justice Department press release.

“Parental rights are paramount in the operation of America’s public schools, and Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools does not know children better than their own parents,” Dhillon said.

“The Department will not tolerate school districts playing fast and loose with federal law in the service of radical gender ideology,” she added. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: New Jersey School District Pushed ‘Secret Gender Transitions Behind Closed Doors,’ New Lawsuit Alleges)

Ryan A. Kriegshauser, U.S. Attorney for the District of Kansas, offered a similar sentiment.

“This lawsuit should not come as a surprise. Public education functions effectively only when schools and parents engage in a genuine partnership. When schools withhold information from parents, they undermine trust and disrupt the essential balance between families and public educators,” he said, according to a Sep. 1 press release.

The Education Department previously threatened to pull federal funding from the Olathe, Shawnee Mission, Topeka and Kansas City school districts over their gender-inclusive policies, the Kansas Reflector reported.

Gender transitions can have negative effects. “Gender-affirming care” can harm minors. 95% of young transgender people on testosterone — a form of gender-affirming care — develop pelvic floor dysfunction; most have bowel issues and sexual dysfunction. The Telegraph newspaper reported that “87 per cent” of young transgender people on testosterone “had urinary symptoms such as incontinence, frequent toilet visits and bed-wetting, while 74 per cent had bowel issues including constipation or being unable to hold stools or wind in. Some 53 per cent suffered from sexual dysfunction…Almost half had an ‘orgasm disorder’, while a quarter suffered from pain during sexual intercourse.”

Even researchers who back “gender-affirming care” have admitted that it increases rather than reduces the risk of suicide. The FDA notes that puberty blockers can cause brain swelling and vision loss, and an FDA official who supported giving minors puberty blockers conceded that they actually increase suicidality. Indeed, the “FDA knew ‘gender affirming’ puberty blockers increase ‘suicidality’ in 2017,” reported Just the News.

The nation’s leading transgender lawyer defending gender transitions for minors — the ACLU’s Chase Strangio — conceded to the Supreme Court that “there is no evidence…that this treatment reduces completed suicide.” A 2024 study in the Cureus Journal of Medical Science found that sex changes massively increase suicide risks, rather than reducing them.

Yet doctors who did sex changes often falsely told parents that they needed to give their kids a sex change to keep them from committing suicide, even though this isn’t true. One of America’s most prominent gender doctors, “Dr. Olson-Kennedy disclosed to how she speaks with parents of gender dysphoric patients: ‘We often ask parents, “Would you rather have a dead son than a live daughter?’”

Next Thursday, I will get a vagina. The procedure will last around six hours, and I will be in recovery for at least three months. Until the day I die, my body will regard the vagina as a wound; as a result, it will require regular, painful attention to maintain. This is what I want, but there is no guarantee it will make me happier. In fact, I don’t expect it to.

A gender transition can result in a lifetime of pain, discomfort, and medications, such as hormone therapy. As Britain’s National Health Service explains, hormones “need to be taken for the rest of your life, even if you have gender surgery.” Puberty blockers can cause brain swelling and vision loss, according to health officials, and they may increase suicide risks.

Jazz Jennings is the most famous kid to undergo a gender transition, with a long-running TV show celebrating Jazz’s gender transition. Health providers falsely said that a sex change would make Jazz happy, and falsely told Jazz’s mother that Jazz was at risk for suicide if she didn’t allow Jazz to transition. “Do you want a live daughter or a dead son?,” they asked Jazz’s mother, peddling a talking point that is often used on parents of transgender teens.

But by 2023, Jazz was miserable. Jazz’s penis was surgically removed at age 17, after Jazz was put on puberty blockers at age 11. Jazz became depressed, saying “I don’t feel like me, ever.” After Jazz’s sex change, Jazz experienced pain, constant reflux, a lack of sex drive, an inability to orgasm, rapid weight gain, and mental illness.