Trump’s Education Department is taking aim at an all-gender bathroom in a Denver school

By Sara Randazzo – Feb. 6, 2025 – Wall Street Journal

East High School in Denver has about 2,500 students. Photo: Rachel Woolf for WSJ

My cmnt: “All-gender” bathrooms is misleading. There are only two genders, male and female, corresponding to their biological sex at conception. No one is “assigned” a gender at birth. Other than rare genetic anomalies 99.9% of all humans are either male or female depending on their chromosomes. Persons with gender dysphoria are in the vast majority of cases mentally ill and should not be encouraged by propaganda from the Left. Persons with rare intersex conditions, like Brittney Griner and Castor Semenya, deserve our sympathy but do not deserve to beat up on and dominate normal girls and women because they are closer to being men than being women. Actual normal men, like Lea Thomas, should not be allowed to enter women’s locker rooms and compete against girls and women because they failed in their sports as men. I’ve edited this article for space and accuracy.

A second-floor bathroom at a Denver high school is suddenly on the front lines of President Trump’s war on “woke.”

In one of its first moves, the Trump administration’s Education Department launched a civil-rights probe into East High School’s decision to convert a female bathroom into an all-gender one. The department is investigating whether the new bathroom amounts to sex discrimination because girls now have fewer dedicated restrooms than boys.

The scrutiny of a single bathroom signals to schools nationwide that Trump will leverage federal authority against what the current administration has labeled as liberal race and gender policies. The threat alone could prompt schools to change to avoid risking a federal inquiry, legal experts say.

“This is a warning shot to schools,” said Jackie Gharapour Wernz, an education civil-rights lawyer who works with school systems and universities. She has fielded a flurry of concerns from clients. Officials in one school district asked whether they need to remove library books that feature LGBTQ characters. 

Trump has made rolling back transgender accommodations and diversity initiatives a centerpiece in his early days in office. One of his first-day executive orders proclaimed that “women are biologically female, and men are biologically male.” He issued another executive order seeking to end “radical indoctrination” in U.S. schools, and on Wednesday signed another one aiming to ban biological boys and men from competing in female school sports. 

In Denver, the federal attention is a surprising turn of events for a collection of six metal stalls.  

Denver’s East High School has turned a female bathroom into a gender-neutral one, prompting the Trump administration to launch a civil-rights probe. Photo: Denver Public Schools

This winter, the 2,500-student school turned a girls’ lavatory into an all-gender one, following requests from the school’s Queer Student Alliance and others to create more options for transgender and nonbinary students to comfortably use the facilities.

The hallways buzzed with chatter about the change when students returned from break to find girls now have two dedicated bathrooms in the four-story brick campus, and none on the highly trafficked second floor, while boys have three. 

The new restroom has been met with some grumbling, according to East High School students, staff and parents. Several girls said they weren’t so much concerned about transgender students as worried about using a space where boys could be in the next stall. 

“They took a space from me that I felt comfortable in,” said Mattison Nunez, a senior. “While they were trying to serve one community they took it away from another.” 

The change has exacerbated adolescent shenanigans that often take place in high-school bathrooms, according to students and staff.  

“The bathrooms are a mess here,” said senior Grace Hegstrom. She and other female students wanting to avoid the mixed-gender restroom said their five-minute passing periods are now eaten up running to other floors and waiting in longer lines.

The Education Department is investigating whether the school’s new bathroom amounts to sex discrimination. Photo: Rachel Woolf for WSJ

The federal investigation didn’t stem from a formal citizen complaint, which is the most common way for the department’s Office for Civil Rights to get involved in a local school issue. Instead, the Trump administration proactively ordered an investigation, citing a local TV news segment on the bathroom, which aired after comments made by a parent at a school board meeting. 

“My 14-year-old daughter, who has most of her classes on the second floor, has to now rush to the first or third floor girls’ restroom to releave herself in comfort,” the parent, Lori Ramos, told the Denver Public Schools board in January. “Administration has sacrificed the comfort of these young females for this dubious change by now limiting their options,” she said.

Reached by The Wall Street Journal, Ramos said she withdrew her daughter from the school and hopes Trump can make an impact on Denver schools. 

Denver school district officials said they chose to convert the girls’ room because it already had stalls and wouldn’t require removing urinals. The new stall dividers extend 12-feet high and don’t have gaps like typical bathroom enclosures. 

In a message to parents in January, school leaders addressed concerns that something was being taken away from female students. “This restroom is accessible to all genders,” the message said. “Please know that this choice was made for practical reasons only.”

Memorabilia on display in the lobby at East High School. Photo: Rachel Woolf for WSJ

The Education Department publicized the investigation with a news release—an unusual move that sends a message to other school systems, noted legal experts. Two other Denver schools have multi-stall all-gender bathrooms, which the department noted in its investigation letter. A Denver schools spokesman said the bathroom reflects the district’s commitment to inclusivity and “providing a welcoming space for all.”

Craig Trainor, the acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said the Education Department will actively seek out rights violations, even without a complaint. “Where we have reason to believe federal civil rights laws within our jurisdiction are violated, we will thoroughly investigate it,” he said in a statement to the Journal. 

Soon after launching the investigation, the Education Department circulated a letter explaining it intends to enforce the prohibition on sex discrimination in education, known as Title IX, based on the view that there are two, immutable sexes. 

The Education Department’s interpretation of Title IX has fluctuated substantially between presidential administrations, with Trump now reversing a Biden-era policy.

A civil-rights investigation often takes several months or more. If it ends in a finding against the school system, Denver schools would have to change its policy or risk losing millions in federal funding. Denver could challenge an unfavorable finding in federal court. 

Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute, a right-of-center think tank, said some conservatives believe an active federal government is needed to combat liberal influence. “We have been in a defensive crouch too long, muttering about small government,” Hess said, describing that view. “We ran telling people what we were going to do and by gosh we ought to do it aggressively.”

Write to Sara Randazzo at sara.randazzo@wsj.com and Matt Barnum at matt.barnum@wsj.com

Appeared in the February 7, 2025, print edition as ‘School Bathroom Is Focus in Trans-Rights Fight’.