The California Department of Education (CDE) “egregiously abused” their authority by forcing school districts to conceal students’ gender transitions from parents, according to The U.S. Department of Education.
The Jan. 28 announcement states that the federal investigation, which was initiated in March 2025, found that the CDE’s encouragement to schools to keep “gender support plans” secret violates FERPA, a federal law that grants parents’ rights to access their children’s education records.
In a press release, U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon addressed the investigation’s findings that CDE’s gender transition policy violated FERPA.
“Under [California Gov.] Gavin Newsom’s failed leadership, school personnel have even bragged about facilitating ‘gender transitions,’ and shared strategies to target minors and conceal information about children from their own families,” McMahon said. “While the Biden Administration turned a blind eye to this deprivation of parental rights and endorsed the irreversible harms done to children in the name of radical transgender ideology, the Trump Administration will fight relentlessly to end it.”
Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1955 in July 2024, barring schools from informing parents that their child is transitioning to the opposite sex or is experiencing gender confusion.
Among other requests, the federal government is calling the CDE to issue a notice announcing that all gender support plans are educational documents, and all parents can access their children’s documents across every school district.
CDE must also publicize that there is no “unofficial records” exception to FERPA. Schools that violate FERPA may face loss of federal financial assistance.
“Children do not belong to the State—they belong to families,” McMahon said. “We will use every available mechanism to hold California accountable for these practices and restore parental rights.”
Sonja Shaw, Chino Valley Unified School board president who has fought Assembly Bill 1955 since its introduction, celebrated the announcement on social media, posting, “Children belong to families, not the state. God-given and constitutional rights are worth fighting for!!”
“The U.S. Department of Education just ruled: parents have the right to know. We fought the good fight,” Shaw said. “We never backed down. California violated federal law. This is proof that momentum is building for real change—protecting kids, empowering parents, and ending secrecy. California parents have had enough of this ideology being pushed on our families and our most precious gifts from God: our children.”
