The United States Department of Justice is suing USD 500 Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools to stop secret gender transitions.
According to a release from DOJ on Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2026, the department filed a ” first-of-its-kind lawsuit against Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools (KCKPS) to stop the district from facilitating secret “gender transitions” for children at school without their parents’ knowledge or consent.
As The Sentinel reported earlier this year, a whistleblower video confirmed USD 500 Kansas City appeared to be continuing to flout state and federal law concerning “social transitioning” of students by having the conversations “be like underground railroad conversations … so not stopping the work, just not making it so public.”
The Sentinel filed a request under the Kansas Open Records Act for the document in question, which was provided. The document entitled “USD 500 TRANSGENDER AND GENDER NON-CONFORMING STUDENTS INTERNAL GUIDANCE DOCUMENT” clearly states that decisions to notify parents will be made on a case-by-case basis.
The USD 500 guidelines state: “A student or a student’s parent or legal guardian should contact the school principal if a student is transgender or gender non-conforming and the student or the student’s parent or legal guardian are seeking any related accommodations. If any staff member learns a student is transgender or gender non-conforming, that information should be relayed to the school principal without delay. The school principal should discuss available accommodations and resources with the student or the student’s parent or legal guardian (emphasis added), including the availability of a planning meeting.”
DOJ and the United States Department of Education believed that it violates the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or “FERPA.”
According to the release, conduct by USD 500 violates the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA) — laws designed to safeguard parental rights, including the rights to access and oversee information collected and maintained about their children in public schools.
DOJ Civil Rights Counsel Jordan Carpenter said on the Pete Mundo Show on Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026, that FERPA and PPRA have been on the books for years.
“DOJ has been partnering with the Department of Education to take a look at these schools’ policies, and worked closely with their department, and they have an entire office that’s charged with the enforcement of these parental rights statutes that have been on the books for half a century, and to put it mildly, they’ve been lightly enforced in in this regard. Parents have several rights,” Carpenter said. “Congress spoke very clearly about what they say schools that take federal funds should do, and so you know, just in the last 10 to 15 years, schools have decided that they are able to hide information from parents because it deals with a student’s sexual orientation or so-called gender identity or whatever, and they think this is a class of information that they’re able to hide.”
The Department of Education had previously found USD 500 and several other Kansas schools to be in violation of the law.
After attempts by the department to bring KCKPS into compliance with the law failed, the matter was referred to DOJ for action.
In a letter dated July 21, 2026, obtained by The Sentinel, and signed by Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights Division, Harmeet K. Dhillon and United States Attorney District of Kansas Ryan Kriegshauser, the DOJ demanded that KCKPS cease its transitioning policy violating FERPA within 14 days.
The letter noted that the law conditions the provision of federal funds to educational institutions on not adopting “a policy of denying, or which effectively prevents, the parents of students who are or have been in attendance at a school of such agency or at such institution, as the case may be, the right to inspect and review the education records of their children,” and points out that KCKPS is a recipient of federal funds.
USD 500 accused of “social transitioning”
In the complaint, DOJ alleges the district continues to maintain so-called “social transitioning” policies in violation of the law.
“The District maintains policies that direct staff to help students socially transition to a different gender at school and to withhold this information from parents as confidential,” the complaint reads. “This conduct violates FERPA’s guarantee that parents can see their children’s school records, seek correction of those records, and prevent disclosure of identifying information without consent. This conduct also violates PPRA’s guarantee that minor students will not be required to submit to any survey, analysis, or evaluation revealing sensitive information without prior written consent from their parents.”
Dhillon said in the release that this was unacceptable.
“Parental rights are paramount in the operation of America’s public schools, and Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools does not know children better than their own parents,” Dhillon said. “The Department will not tolerate school districts playing fast and loose with federal law in the service of radical gender ideology.”
Kriegshauser said USD 500 should have anticipated the lawsuit, as they had been warned it was coming.
“This lawsuit should not come as a surprise,” Kriegshauser said in the release. “Public education functions effectively only when schools and parents engage in a genuine partnership. When schools withhold information from parents, they undermine trust and disrupt the essential balance between families and public educators.”
Carpenter said the Department of Education has a complaint portal set up for violations of FERPA and PPRA.
“I just want to make clear, you know, the PPRA, the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment, says that schools shouldn’t be asking your kids about a set of protected categories of information without your prior written parental consent, and that goes for everything from political beliefs to religious beliefs, sex behaviors and attitudes, those types of things,” he said. “You know, stuff that everyone thinks, hey, don’t talk to my kid about that without my permission, and then whether they are hiding information in this in the students’ records, and so there’s a complaint portal at the Department of Education’s website. Like I said, we’ve partnered with them very well, and that’s the way that a citizen can get that to be a visible complaint.”
