NYC, Chicago, Fairfax colleges might lose grants over toilet insurance policies

By CAROLYN THOMPSON, Related Press

Three of the nation’s largest public college districts stand to lose $24 million after lacking a Trump administration deadline to agree to alter insurance policies supporting transgender college students, officers mentioned Wednesday.

The U.S. Training Division’s Workplace for Civil Rights had given New York Metropolis Colleges, Chicago Public Colleges and Fairfax County Public Colleges in Virginia till Tuesday to conform to cease giving college students entry to locker rooms and restrooms corresponding with their gender identification or threat dropping funding for specialty magnet colleges.

In letters to the districts Sept. 16, the Training Division’s performing assistant secretary for civil rights, Craig Trainor, mentioned the apply violates Title IX, which forbids discrimination based mostly on intercourse in training. As a result of the districts didn’t agree by Tuesday to take remedial motion detailed in Trainor’s letters, the division mentioned, Trainor won’t certify that they’re in compliance with federal civil rights legislation, making them ineligible for the grants.

Hundreds of thousands in grants at stake

Fairfax County colleges will lose $3.4 million in Magnet Faculty Help Program funding within the subsequent fiscal yr, which begins Oct. 1. About $5.8 million might be withheld from Chicago colleges and group college districts in New York Metropolis will lose about $15 million, in response to the Training Division.

“The Division won’t rubber-stamp civil rights compliance for New York, Chicago, and Fairfax whereas they blatantly discriminate in opposition to college students based mostly on race and intercourse,” division spokesperson Julie Hartman mentioned through e-mail. “These are public colleges, funded by hardworking American households, and oldsters have each proper to count on a wonderful training—not ideological indoctrination masquerading as `inclusive’ coverage.’”

Further insurance policies beneath scrutiny

Together with limiting entry to restrooms and locker rooms, the division additionally demanded that New York Metropolis and Chicago colleges difficulty public statements saying they won’t permit males to compete in feminine athletic applications.

Chicago colleges had been additional informed to abolish a program that gives remedial tutorial assets to Black college students, which Trainor labeled “textbook racial discrimination.” Faculty officers estimated a complete of about $8 million can be misplaced for initiatives which have expanded staffing, expertise and enrichment alternatives like subject journeys and after-school programming.

Chicago training officers faulted the division for failing to supply proof that its college students had been being harmed and mentioned it was performing exterior of its personal procedures for complaints.

“Our mission, applications, and insurance policies not solely meet our obligation to college students, however additionally they plainly adjust to the legislation,” performing common counsel Elizabeth Barton mentioned within the district’s response to Trainor.

The Training Division denied requests from New York Metropolis and Chicago for extra time to answer the calls for. It was unclear whether or not Fairfax County colleges made such a request. The district didn’t reply to requests for data.

In his letter to New York Metropolis colleges, Trainor cited a number of of the district’s insurance policies, together with one saying that transgender college students can’t be required to make use of an alternate facility, corresponding to a single-occupancy toilet, as an alternative of a daily restroom. Meaning trans college students “are given unqualified entry to feminine intimate areas,” he wrote.

Every of the districts was informed they’d lose funding until they agreed to rescind insurance policies that violate Title IX and undertake “biology-based definitions of the phrases female and male” in practices referring to Title IX.

“Chopping this funding — which invests in specialised curricula, afterschool training, and summer season studying — harms not solely the roughly 8,500 college students this program presently advantages, however all of our college students from underserved communities,” New York Metropolis colleges mentioned in a press release. “If the federal authorities pulls this funding, meaning canceled programs and shrinking enrichment. That’s a consequence our metropolis can’t afford and our college students don’t deserve.”

Consideration from New York Metropolis mayoral candidates

The subject got here up on the marketing campaign path in New York Metropolis’s contentious mayoral election in latest days.

Incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, raised eyebrows when he mentioned at an unrelated information convention that he want to look into altering the coverage if it “is permitting girls and boys to make use of the identical facility on the similar time.” The remarks got here days after the Trump administration’s letter, although he has insisted they had been unrelated.

Adams’ feedback had been swiftly condemned by the race’s Democratic nominee, Zohran Mamdani, who referred to as them “utterly at odds with the values of our metropolis.”

Adams mentioned this week that he want to change the town’s coverage — but additionally that he didn’t have the ability. The state’s human rights legislation additionally permits college students to make use of bogs and locker rooms that align with their gender identification.

On Wednesday, Adams’ workplace mentioned the administration was reviewing choices, together with litigation.

“The federal authorities is threatening to defund our kids’s training as a instrument to alter insurance policies it doesn’t like,” Metropolis Corridor spokesperson Kayla Mamelak Altus mentioned in a press release. “Whereas Mayor Adams might not agree with each rule or coverage, we’ll all the time stand as much as shield vital assets for our metropolis’s 1 million college students.”

Related Press reporter Anthony Izaguirre in Albany, New York, and AP Training Author Collin Binkley in Washington contributed to this report.

Initially Printed: September 24, 2025 at 2:10 PM PDT