Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach is urging the United States Department of Education to open an investigation against four school districts in the state after they have allegedly refused to comply with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA and are “socially transitioning” children without their parents’ knowledge.
Kobach is writing in support of a formal complaint against the Shawnee Mission, Olathe, Kansas City, Kansas and Topeka public schools by the Defense of Freedom Institute for Policy Studies filed on June 24, 2025.
According to a release from Kobach’s office, in a letter to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, Kobach writes that Kansas City USD 500, Olathe USD 223, Shawnee Mission USD 512, and Topeka USD 501 have policies that allow or require teachers to conceal from parents information concerning the “social transitioning” of their children.
Indeed in late 2023, as the Sentinel reported, Kobach accused several large school districts in the state of violating parental notification requirements regarding transgender students, and sent letters to six Kansas school districts, challenging their policies that require or allow school district staff to conceal from parents a student’s “transgender” or “gender non-conforming” status.
According to Kobach’s office, USD 357 Belle Plaine and USD 266 Maize responded to the letter stating they had immediately rescinded or amended their policies.
However, USD 500 Kansas City, USD 233 Olathe, USD 512 Shawnee Mission, and USD 501 Topeka declined to make changes.
In December of 2023, the Sentinel contacted the four districts as well, asking specifically if staff in their districts were required to notify parents if “students are ‘socially transitioning,’ i.e., a change in name, pronoun or ‘gender identity’ while at school or in school activities.”
Only Shawnee Mission responded, and only with the same letter claiming “misinformation” the district provided to Kobach’s office.
“That a Kansas school district would so cavalierly act to hide such information from parents is shockingly irresponsible,” Kobach said in the release.
Business as usual for the districts
It would appear that nothing has changed.
According to DFI’s complaint, as recently as June 9, “A notice on SMSD’s website states that it prohibits discrimination and harassment against any person on the basis of characteristics including ‘gender identity,'” the complaint reads. “On a separate page that, as recently as June 9, was dedicated to ‘Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging,’ the school district explains that it ’embraces its role in establishing a long-term mission and vision for diversity, equity, and inclusion by relentlessly creating a fully unified, equitable, and inclusive culture.’
That page, however, has apparently undergone some revision to refer only to “Belonging and Engagement” and to use “less-militant language in communicating its plan to create a ‘unified, equitable, and inclusive culture.'”
Olathe Public Schools, like SMSD do not have — according to the complaint — a “formal policy adopted by its school board on gender identity or pronoun usage, but rather uses “administrative guidance” in which building administrators are expected to “acknowledge the student’s request and partner with the student and the family to the greatest extent possible in supporting the student’s request, all without causing trauma to the student during the process.”
KCKPS in August 2020 adopted a policy prohibiting “’discrimination and harassment against students, employees, or others’ on bases including ‘sex/gender (to include orientation, identity or expression,'” according to DFI’s letter. “KCKPS board policies also include prohibition of discrimination against any student based on ‘sex/gender (to include orientation, identity or expression) … in the admission or access to, or treatment in the district’s programs and activities …’
According to the complaint, KCKPS board policies provide that “unequal treatment in terms of educational programs or opportunities (e.g., discipline, grading, class assignments, testing, internships, access to facilities, admission to programs, etc.)” could be considered prohibited discrimination “if based on a protected class” including “gender identity” or “expression.”
Topeka also apparently continues to allow social transitioning with a policy entitled “Guidelines for Transgender Students at School, last revised in 2018.
“The purpose of this regulation is to create a safe learning environment for all students by providing guidelines for schools and district staff to address the needs of transgender and gender nonconforming students … In all cases, the goal is to ensure the safety, comfort, and healthy development of the transgender or gender nonconforming student while maximizing the student’s social integration and minimizing stigmatization of the student. (emphasis added by DFI)
“The TPS regulation provides that ‘[s]tudents shall have access to the restroom that corresponds to their gender identity consistently asserted at school,'” according to the complaint. “As for locker rooms, the TPS Regulation provides that ‘[t]he use of locker rooms by transgender students shall be assessed on a case-by-case basis with the goals of maximizing the student’s social integration and equal opportunity to participate in physical education classes and sports, ensuring the student’s safety and comfort, and minimizing stigmatization of the student.’ The document then clarifies that, “[i]n most cases, transgender students should have access to the locker room that corresponds to their gender identity consistently asserted at school.'”
DFI asserts these are not only violations of FERPA, but of Title IX as well. The Biden administration attempted to rewrite Title IX to add “gender identity” as a “protected class,” but both a federal judge in Kentucky and the United States Supreme Court struck down that attempt.
In State of Tennessee v Cardona, U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves found the Department of Education “exceeded its statutory authority” in implementing its rule expanding Title IX safeguards. In his decision, Reeves wrote that the prohibition on sex discrimination is “abundantly clear” that the law refers to discrimination “on the basis of being male or female.” He added that “there is nothing in the text or statutory design of Title IX to suggest that discrimination ‘on the basis of sex’ means anything other than it has since Title IX’s inception.” The 1972 law does not mention “gender identity.”
SCOTUS would later — in a 9-0 ruling — agree that Reeves was correct in issuing a nationwide injunction.
DFI concluded that the four districts are in violation of FERPA and asked DOE to take action.
“FERPA prohibits federally funded school districts from denying or effectively preventing parents from accessing the educational records of their minor children, and it prevents district officials from disclosing such records to any individuals without parental consent — with exceptions not relevant in the present matter,” the letter reads. “SMSD, OPS, KCKPS, and TPS are in violation of FERPA because they are undermining parents’ rights to access their children’s educational records and appear to be distributing the information contained therein to employees with no legitimate educational interest in these records without parental consent. Therefore, we ask (the department) to consider the information we have presented in this letter and consider opening a directed investigation of the ‘gender identity’ parental exclusion policies and practices of these school districts.”
Kobach concurred.
“I respectfully urge your department to review the harmful and illegal district policies described in DFI’s letter and open an investigation of these school districts’ failure to comply with FERPA and Title IX by concealing critical information from parents about their children’s psychological and emotional health and requiring students to share sex-separated intimate spaces with individuals of the opposite sex,” Kobach’s letter to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon reads.
