The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has opened an investigation into Denver Public Schools for “discriminating against its female students” after the district converted a women’s restroom into an all-gender facility, the office announced Tuesday.
The installation of the bathroom at East High School, with a student body of more than 2,000, now has an “exclusive restroom for male students and no restroom for female students on its second floor,” according to the office.
“The alarming report that the Denver Public Schools District denied female students a restroom comparable with their male counterparts appears to directly violate the civil rights of the District’s female students,” Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said in a statement. “Let me be clear: it is a new day in America, and under President Trump, OCR will not tolerate discrimination of any kind.”
In a letter addressed to the district’s superintendent, Trainor said the investigation will examine if Denver Public Schools discriminated against students on the basis of sex by installing the all-gender restroom as a potential failure to comply with Title IX, which the district is subject to as a recipient of federal financial assistance from the Department of Education.
The letter also cites local NBC affiliate KUSA’s reporting that the district has installed two other multistall all-gender restrooms in the district at the Denver School of the Arts and CEC Early College.
“It is unprecedented for the Office for Civil Rights to admittedly initiate its own investigation, into a single bathroom, as a result of local media coverage rather than in response to a filed complaint requesting their involvement,” Denver Public Schools said in a statement.
The district said the restroom was added as a result of a “student-led process” to serve “all students, including those who may feel uncomfortable in gender-specific facilities.”
The all-gender restroom has stalls with 12-foot-tall partitions, and the high school faculty has developed a plan to “supervise and monitor” it “just as they do with all others,” according to the district.
In a message sent to parents in the community prior to the restroom’s opening, the school district stated that the second-loor women’s restroom was selected for the conversion because additional “structural makeup” in the men’s restroom, including urinals, would have required removal and pushed costs “outside of the construction budget.”
The district added that if it receives additional funding, the decision to convert the men’s restroom into an all-gender facility would be considered as well.
Those who do not feel comfortable using the new all-gender restroom have been encouraged by the district to use a restroom on a different floor or the single-stall restroom on the second floor.
Trainor, in his letter, said the initiation of the investigation is “not itself evidence of wrongdoing” and requests for “access to data and personnel” will be submitted this week.
The Office for Civil Rights’ investigation follows sweeping changes since President Donald Trump began his second term last week, including executive orders targeting “gender ideology,” federal DEI programs, transition-related medical care for minors and transgender military service.
Trump’s anti-DEI executive order has also affected employee resource groups, including DOJ Pride, an LGBTQ employee resource group at the Department of Justice, which shut down on Wednesday.
