Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin has tried since 2022 to get the suburban D.C. school districts in his state to end their policies accommodating transgender students.
Last week, the Trump administration offered considerable firepower to his cause when it announced it would require the five districts to justify every dollar they spend in order to receive federal funding. In a stern statement, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said Alexandria, Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William — the five northernmost districts closest to the nation’s capital — are “choosing to abide by woke gender ideology in place of federal law.”
But even as McMahon placed them on “high-risk” status, their leaders refused to change policies that allow students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity, meaning the Republican governor might leave office in January without accomplishing his goal.
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Grace Turner Creasy, president of the Virginia Board of Education, said it’s “anyone’s guess” whether the department’s move will change the outcome. District leaders say they are following state law and the most current federal court opinion on the issue.
The state’s position on the matter might also shift in the next few months with Youngkin ineligible to run again in November. Democrat Abigail Spanberger, who is leading in the polls, hasn’t addressed the controversy, while Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears has grabbed onto the issue, much as Youngkin did in 2021 when he appealed to parents angry over pandemic school closures and “critical race theory.”
The department’s action against the Virginia districts is part of an effort by President Donald Trump to force states and districts to comply with his executive order stating that the federal government only recognizes two sexes. Following that move in January, the Education Department said it wouldn’t enforce the Biden-era Title IX rule, which expanded protections for transgender students.
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On Thursday, Trump threatened to pull all federal funding from “any California school district that doesn’t adhere to our Transgender policies.” The administration is already suing California and Maine on trans students’ participation in women’s sports.
The conflict with the Virginia districts has been building since February when the department launched a probe into their policies. In July, officials found them in violation of Title IX and gave them 10 days to change their rules and “adopt biology-based definitions of the words ‘male’ and ‘female’ in all practices and policies relating to Title IX.”
They refused, and with roughly $50 million for low-income students, special education and other programs at risk, last week’s move escalated the dispute to a new level.
“You’re going to continue to see the Trump administration put … pressure in a variety of ways that affect funding. It feels like all options are on the table,” said W. Scott Lewis, managing partner with TNG Consulting, which trains districts across the country on Title IX. He added that where the Education Department directs its enforcement “may vary by state, depending on gubernatorial and state house control.”
‘Totally atypical’
The penalty is severe, experts said. The high-risk label is usually reserved for districts or states in serious financial trouble.
In 2006, the Education Department slapped that designation on the District of Columbia Public Schools for mismanaging money, including federal grants and charter school funds.
In another example, the Michigan Department of Education placed the Detroit district in high-risk status after a federal audit found the district misused over $53 million. The district spent Title I funds, for example, on equipment and building improvements the state didn’t approve, paid vendors more than the amount of their contracts and couldn’t produce invoices and receipts for multiple transactions. The district remained under federal oversight for five years.
In this case, the added layer of scrutiny isn’t because of suspected mismanagement of the grant funds themselves; it’s an ideological disagreement. David DeSchryver, senior vice president of Whiteboard Advisors, a consulting firm, called the action “totally atypical in terms of scale.”
With the school year just starting, the question is whether any “new hurdles” might slow down the reimbursement process, said Dan Adams, spokesman for the Loudoun County Public Schools. In a statement, the Virginia Department of Education said it “will closely scrutinize any future requests” for funding.
At least one of the five superintendents, Arlington’s Francisco Durán, told the public at a board meeting Thursday that he’s prepared to take legal action if the district’s funding is challenged.
But conservatives view McMahon’s approach as accountability for districts that are defying the president.
“By refusing to reverse your reckless policies, you are failing our daughters and risking losing millions of dollars in funding,” Earle-Sears said at Arlington’s board meeting. “As governor, I will not stand by while political correctness tramples over science, fairness and safety.”
The district has faced criticism over a February incident in which a registered sex offender identifying as a transgender woman used a women’s locker room at Washington Liberty High School. The school’s indoor pool is open to the public after school hours, and Durán said officials were unaware the person was a registered offender.
Ginny Gentiles, an Arlington parent and a school choice expert at the conservative Defense of Freedom Institute, said the districts are “clinging to activist-drafted policies that allow males to self-ID into female spaces,” but that she hopes officials will listen to those concerned about women’s and girls’ safety.
She urged community members to closely monitor expenditures.
“School board leaders clearly intend to spend taxpayer dollars on inevitable court cases and likely expensive legal fees,” she said.
Earle-Sears also joined a protest in Loudoun County on Wednesday, where district officials threatened to suspend two boys for sexual harassment and sex discrimination. They complained last spring when a student identifying as a trans boy used the locker room to change and videotaped them.
‘Federal overreach’
Some observers say the battle between Washington and its neighboring districts is more than a culture war. Kristen Amundson, a former Democratic state lawmaker and Fairfax County school board member, said the administration is trying to exert control over blue cities.
“This is not about trans kids; this is about federal overreach,” she said. She cited federal troops patrolling Washington and Trump’s makeover of the Kennedy Center Honors as further examples. “Do you see the pattern here?”
The impasse also comes at a difficult time for the state’s Republicans, which tend to elect governors from the party that’s not in the White House. Northern Virginia already votes predominantly blue, and residents, Amundson said, are especially angry at Washington.
“They have seen thousands of parents lose their jobs” because of federal government downsizing and “parents snatched off the streets” in immigration raids, she said.
For Earle-Sears, a school choice advocate, the debate over trans students is a key campaign issue. In contrast, Spanberger, who has three school-age daughters, has an education platform focused on improving instruction in public schools and addressing teacher shortages.
Anne Holton, former secretary of education under Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe, called the issue a distraction “from the issues that parents really care about,” like employing high-quality teachers and preparing kids well for college or a career.
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For now, districts say they are complying with the Virginia Values Act. Enacted in 2020, it allows anyone to use facilities that align with their gender identity. In addition, the Trump administration’s policies, they say, conflict with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit’s opinion in Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board.
That’s been their position since 2022, when Youngkin issued rules stating that students must use bathrooms and locker rooms that match the sex they were assigned at birth. A year later, Jason Miyares, the state’s attorney general, advised that the governor’s rules didn’t violate state or federal anti-discrimination laws. Yet district policies remain unchanged.
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In Grimm, the court ruled that the district’s transgender bathroom ban was unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2021 turned down an appeal in that case. In its upcoming term, the Supreme Court will hear lawsuits from West Virginia and Idaho that test whether states can ban transgender girls from competing in female sports.
Those cases “will further clarify Title IX’s application,” Arlington’s Durán said at last week’s board meeting. “But in the meantime, our policy will remain in place in alignment with state and federal law, and we are prepared to defend it and our federal funding if challenged.”
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