Anne Arundel schools updates gender identity regulation following Trump administration threats

Under pressure from the Trump administration, Anne Arundel County Public Schools Superintendent Mark Bedell announced Wednesday the district had updated a regulation intended to protect transgender students’ right to be called by their chosen name.

The revised language makes clear that district rules on gender identity do not block parents’ rights under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act as the federal government alleged last month, and that a student’s gender identity will not be treated as confidential medical information.

“No policy, guideline, or practice may limit or otherwise interfere with parental rights under FERPA,” Bedell wrote in a Wednesday letter to the community. “This includes any information maintained in education records that relates to gender identity, transgender status, sexual orientation, preferred name, or preferred pronouns.”

The years-old policy became the focus of intense scrutiny last month after parents of an area high school student filed a federal lawsuit alleging teachers and staff lied about and hid their child’s gender transition because of the policy. The couple says the policy conflicts with their religious beliefs and sought to opt out.

A few weeks later, the federal government threatened to punish Anne Arundel County Public Schools with legal action or a loss of federal funding, alleging the suburban Maryland district violated federal student privacy law by withholding students’ gender identities from parents.

District officials had not spoken publicly about the lawsuit or the federal probe before Bedell’s letter appeared on the district’s website, including at a Wednesday school board meeting.

Last month, allies of transgender students urged state education officials to fight back against attacks from the Trump administration and its supporters. The parents who filed the federal lawsuit are represented by an attorney from the conservative America First Legal Foundation, which has already had success getting Montgomery County Public Schools to change a similar policy.

Anne Arundel County’s school system does not require schools to notify parents about a student’s gender identity, nor does it forbid doing so.

District regulation instructs school staff to work with a student’s parents to develop an appropriate plan to support the student and their gender identity, unless there is a genuine concern that doing so could threaten the student’s safety.

There’s also no statewide rule on whether schools must notify parents about their child’s gender identity.

According to the Colorado-based Movement Advancement Project, Maryland is one of 35 states that do not require school staff to out a transgender teen to their parents. Fifteen other states require notification — some only if a student requests to use a different name, others if a student even mentions a desire to change their gender identity.