Education Department terminates six civil-rights agreements protecting transgender students

On April 6, 2026, the U.S. Department of Education announced it had terminated six civil-rights resolution agreements protecting transgender students — agreements reached under the Obama and Biden administrations with Cape Henlopen School District (DE), Fife School District (WA), Delaware Valley School District (PA), and La Mesa-Spring Valley School District, Sacramento City Unified School District, and Taft College in California. The agreements had resolved federal civil-rights complaints by committing the schools to measures such as staff training on using students' names and pronouns and allowing students to use facilities matching their gender identity; with the terminations, the department will no longer enforce those obligations.

In at least one case the department went beyond ending enforcement. Delaware Valley School District, whose Obama-era settlement required it to permit students to use bathrooms aligned with their gender identity, received a rescission notice in February 2026 accompanied by a demand that the district affirmatively roll back its antidiscrimination protections for transgender students; the school board voted in late March to comply. Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said in a written statement that the administration was "removing the unnecessary and unlawful burdens that prior administrations imposed on schools in its relentless pursuit of a radical transgender agenda."

Advocates described the rescission of executed civil-rights resolution agreements as a rarely used and unprecedented step; the National Women's Law Center said there was "absolutely no basis" for it and framed it as part of a broader campaign to strip Title IX protections from transgender students. The action is distinct from, but consistent with, the administration's lawsuits against California and Minnesota over transgender-athlete policies and its civil-rights investigations into schools and universities over their treatment of transgender students.