California sues Trump admin over its demand to forcibly out trans students

[Jessica_Rose ✅]

California sues Trump admin over its demand to forcibly out trans students

https://www.advocate.com/news/education/california-sues-trump-forced-outing 🔗

Trudy Ring (12 Feb 2026)

The state of California has sued the U.S. Department of Education and the entire federal government over their threat to withhold funds totaling $4.9 billion annually because of the state law against forced outing of transgender students.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed the lawsuit Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. It challenges the Department of Education's findings that the California Department of Education "facilitated and promoted the adoption of policies and practices that violate" the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

FERPA, a federal law enacted more than 50 years ago, requires states to disclose students' education records to their parents upon request and bars them from disclosing those records to third parties without prior parental consent. But the law "does not require schools to affirmatively disclose a student's gender identity or preferred name or pronouns to parents, nor does it mention gender identity," says a press release from Bonta's office.

The U.S. DOE sent a letter to the California DOE last March, saying it was initiating an investigation into whether local educational agencies were violating FERPA. The investigation came at the behest of the California Justice Center, a nonprofit group that bills its mission as fighting government "overreach."

The investigation "focuses on a select set of education records for just one group of students — transgender students — and specifically records about their gender identity," the lawsuit says. "This singular focus appears, like so many of Defendants' actions, to be motivated by discriminatory animus against transgender people, including transgender students."