Virginia school district accused of keeping students’ gender transitions hidden

EXCLUSIVE: A school district in Northern Virginia already labeled by the Trump administration as “high risk” within the federal grant system is facing fresh scrutiny amid a civil rights complaint alleging the district is also hiding students’ gender transitions from parents. 

The Trump-aligned lawfare group America First Legal (AFL) submitted a federal civil rights complaint Thursday accusing the Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) system of violating the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (“FERPA”) and infringing upon fundamental parental rights protected by the Fourteenth Amendment through its “Regulation 2603-Gender-Expansive and Transgender Students Guidance Document.”

In particular, AFL is taking issue with some of the district’s guidance that tells educators to refrain from “out[ing]” a student to their parents in district-wide information systems that they have access to, while requiring name and pronoun changes that students request to be made in the district’s information systems that are faculty-facing only. The guidance even goes so far as to tell educators in certain instances where a student feels unsafe to leave any pronoun or nickname information out of district-wide databases altogether, and only use a student’s alternative name or pronouns while at school. 

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“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,” Senior Counsel at AFL, Ian Prior, said.

According to FCPS’s guidance to faculty and teachers, if a student wants to socially transition with a new name, educators should leave their new name out of the district’s official records that are viewable by parents, and only change them in the records viewable by just district officials. The same with nicknames, as the district policy states, “caution should be utilized in using the nickname field in” the parent-facing information databases ran by the district.

“Changing the student’s name in the Student Information tab of SIS and storing the legal name in the Protected Information tab is not appropriate if the student’s parent/guardian is unaware of the student’s transition since this may unintentionally out the student and potentially compromise their safety and well-being,” FCPS’s Regulation 2603 states. “For those students who choose to change name and/or gender in SIS, the legal information will be stored in the Protected Information tab of SIS.”

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The guidance appears to be aware of potential FERPA violations, warning educators that if a parent or guardian requests access to see their child’s records, they will have access to both the child’s chosen and given name.

“If a student transitioning at school is not ready to share with their family about their transgender status, this should be respected,” the guidance instructs. “In this scenario, school staff should make a change socially, calling the student by the chosen name, while their official SIS information remains the same.”

Fox News Digital reached out to FCPS about the new federal civil rights complaint being launched against the district this week. The district said it had not received a copy of the complaint, so they were “not in a position to comment on the specific allegations” that Fox News Digital laid out to them in an email. However, the district did note that “current Fairfax County Public School (FCPS) policies are consistent with federal and state anti-discrimination laws.” 

“FCPS remains committed to fostering a safe, supportive, welcoming, and inclusive school environment for all students and staff,” the district concluded in their response to Fox News Digital.

Last year, the Trump administration put FCPS and a handful of other Northern Virginia school districts on a “high risk” status due to their policies on intimate spaces for females and transgender students, threatening their federal funding and putting it in a “reimbursement only” payment status.

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“The Department of Education has already placed FCPS on a restricted status related to Title IX noncompliance, with related proceedings pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit,” AFL’s civil rights complaint points out. “This complaint independently establishes that FCPS’s current practices also risk federal education funding for violations of FERPA. I invite the Department of Education to take official notice of the existing Title IX enforcement posture as relevant context for federal oversight and remedial measures.”

Title IX attorney and legal expert Sarah Perry said in an interview with Fox News Digital that FERPA and Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment complaints have “inundated” the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights, pointing to one lawsuit she helped file recently against the Seattle Public Schools system. 

“The student privacy office is not used to being weaponized,” Perry said. “They’ve already published a spring agenda – the clarification is apparently going to come from the Trump administration on what an educational record means.”