(LifeSiteNews) – America First Legal (AFL) accused Chicago Public Schools (CPS), San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), and Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) of “socially transitioning” gender-confused students without the knowledge or consent of their parents in new complaints filed with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
The New York Post reported that the group maintains all three districts let students change the names and genders they use at school without parental involvement or notification, plus lets male students who “identify” as girls participate in female-specific athletics and use female lockers and restrooms.
The schools go so far as to put these policies in writing, with Chicago’s declaring that “All students have a right to self-determination. This includes the right to keep their sexuality and gender identity, including transgender, nonbinary, or gender nonconforming identities, confidential at school.”
“These school districts have constructed elaborate systems to hide what is happening to children from the very people who have a fundamental right to know: their parents,” AFL senior counsel Ian Prior said. “Parents are not the enemy, and the era of school districts secretly facilitating life-altering decisions for children behind their parents’ backs must come to an end.”
“Congress and the executive branch need to take a serious look at these schools,” Prior said, “and take every action available to remedy these legal violations,” such as disqualifying them for federal education funds under federal sex discrimination rules, which under the Trump administration applies specifically to actual biological sex.
The superintendents from all three districts appeared before the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce on Wednesday to answer for these and other issues, ranging from abortion to parental rights to religious freedom.
Loudon Superintendent Aaron Spence defended letting gender-confused boys sleep in girls’ rooms on overnight trips, claiming parents who objected could request alternate accommodations for their daughters, and claimed not to know of any instances of school officials deceiving parents about their children’s “gender identity.”
Loudoun has been a magnet for such issues for several years. Two boys at Loudoun County’s Stonebridge High School were suspended last year not for harming or threatening other students but for objecting to the placement of a gender-dysphoric female in the boys’ lockers. Loudoun highlighted the dangers of such situations years ago when superintendent Scott Ziegler allegedly covered up the rape of a female student by a “transgender” classmate in a girls bathroom due to its damaging implications for the LGBT movement. He was later convicted in 2023 of “using his official position to retaliate against someone for exercising their rights” by firing a teacher who testified about the situation before a grand jury.
CPS CEO Dr. Macquline King defended his schools’ policies, insisting they complied with state law and denying they required Christian teachers to “renounce their faith.” During testimony, San Francisco Superintendent Maria Su frequently “dodged the specific question and responded that the district follows state and federal law and followed that by confirming parents can choose to opt out of such activities based on a religious objection,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
The indoctrination of children with left-wing ideology on sexuality, race, and other agenda items has long been a major concern in American schools and libraries, from book shelves to drag events to classroom materials to even “transitioning” troubled children without parental input. Many schools have also displayed hostility to the rights and employment of individual teachers who refuse to go along with such agendas. Across the nation, controversy has also erupted in recent years over schools and libraries adopting books that attempt to expose sexual themes and activity to children, often in graphic detail and with pornographic imagery depicting specific sex acts.
In response, the Trump administration has issued executive orders to deny federal funds to educational entities that indoctrinate students through Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI) programs, among other executive actions to combat so-called “woke ideology” in education, from LGBT indoctrination to girls’ intimate spaces and female-specific sports teams.