The U.S. Department of Education found Thursday that Denver Public Schools (DPS) broke Title IX by creating all-gender bathrooms and allowing students to access bathrooms that aligned with their gender identity rather than their biological sex.

Education Department officials said their Office for Civil Rights opened the investigation in January, with the investigation honing in on a decision made at East High School to convert a restroom for girls into an all-gender restroom.

District officials said the decision was a break with federal policy and violated Title IX, the law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex in educational institutions.

Students Pushed for Bathroom Change

In redrafting the East High School bathrooms, the district said it focused on a former girls’ restroom and transitioned it into an all-gender facility. A bathroom on the same floor was designated for boys.

District officials have maintained that the decision to make the change was the product of a student-led process that was driven by a desire to meet student needs. They have said that the new gender-neutral restrooms also included 12-foot-tall partitions around toilets to protect student privacy and security.

OCR Finds Title IX Violations

Federal officials said the move violated Title IX requirements by restricting the amount of accessible restrooms for students and by creating a “hostile environment” for some students.

The department said that a second all-gender restroom was later installed on the same floor to try to ameliorate the perceived lack of equitable access. District officials also noted that single-stall, all-gender restrooms, as well as traditional male and female bathrooms, remained available to all students throughout the school.

The proposed resolution includes four major conditions DPS must agree to within 10 days to avoid the Department of Education moving forward with enforcement action. If DPS does not agree to the resolution or is found to be out of compliance with federal law, the district could lose federal funding and face other enforcement measures.

In the proposed resolution, the department would require the district to:

Convert all-gender multi-stall restrooms back into sex-separated bathrooms;

End all policies and practices that allow students to use bathrooms and locker rooms on the basis of gender identity rather than biological sex;

Define “male” and “female” as “biology-based definitions” throughout all district Title IX-related policies and practices; and

Issue a memorandum to all schools “stating that the bathrooms are designed and maintained to ensure student privacy, dignity, and safety and that they are comparable in access to one another.”

In a statement, Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said that the move by DPS jeopardized the privacy, dignity, and safety of students.

“The Department finds that the district converted a sex-segregated restroom designated for girls in East High School to an ‘all-gender’ facility and that the district also allows students to use the high school’s intimate facilities on the basis of their gender identity rather than their biological sex. This deprives the district’s students of equal access to intimate facilities in violation of Title IX and its implementing regulations,” Trainor said.

“Let this decision serve as a warning to other school districts: Denver is free to endorse a self-defeating gender ideology, but it is not free to accept federal taxpayer funds and harm its students in violation of Title IX. The Trump Administration will work relentlessly to hold accountable school districts that harbor the ideological fanatics and policies that sully students’ educational experience with sex discrimination,” Trainor continued.

District Defends Student-Centered Approach

The district has pushed back on the findings by the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, pointing out that the policy change was the product of a student-led initiative. They also said that the district worked to maintain high standards for student privacy and security in the new bathrooms.

A spokesperson for Denver Public Schools said that students still have access to a variety of bathrooms, including single-stall all-gender restrooms for those who may desire more privacy.

DPS has not released a public statement in response to the department’s findings but did provide a statement to local news outlet Chalkbeat after officials found a Title IX violation.

As part of a broader national conversation, this case comes on the heels of a Trump administration executive order signed earlier this year barring transgender girls from competing on sports teams that do not correspond with their biological sex.

GOP lawmakers in Congress have also moved forward with legislation aimed at further restricting transgender students from using bathrooms or locker rooms that do not align with their biological sex or from participating on sports teams that do not align with their biological sex.

The Education Department has aggressively moved in the direction on a number of cases involving public and private institutions and gender-based policies. Just this week, the OCR found that George Mason University had violated Title VI with unlawful practices based on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) principles.