Sign up for Chalkbeat Colorado’s free daily newsletter to get the latest reporting from us, plus curated news from other Colorado outlets, delivered to your inbox.An all-gender bathroom in a Denver high school was at the center of the first sex discrimination investigation of the second Trump administration. A year and a half later, the federal Office for Civil Rights has taken no enforcement action. Neighboring Jeffco Public Schools, meanwhile, has been threatened with the loss of federal funds after investigators said they found boys’ names on girls’ sports rosters. Citing policies on locker room access and overnight field trips, the Education Department is pursuing enforcement even after the district said the names belonged to managers, trainers, and mascots.Documents obtained through public records requests shed new light on how the Trump administration approached the two Colorado cases. Investigations that once might have involved in-depth interviews consisted of email back-and-forths. Inconsistent follow-up left districts unsure what to expect after being found in violation. And the alleged violations of Title IX, the federal law banning sex discrimination, were based on untested interpretations.“More aggressive enforcement” could be on the horizon under a new partnership between the Office for Civil Rights and the Department of Justice. That could raise the stakes for school districts and students in how OCR approaches its investigations and arrives at its conclusions. “This is a new way of doing business,” said Seth Galanter, an attorney who worked for OCR under the Obama and Biden administrations and is now a senior fellow at the Edley Center on Law and Democracy at the University of California Berkeley School of Law. “There’s no nuance,” Galanter said. “There’s no inquiry into whether there’s a hostile environment. They say, ‘You have a policy, and the policy violated the law and yeah, you’re in trouble now.’ That is not something that prior administrations would have done.”OCR is increasingly focused on undoing protections for transgender students through investigations it initiates itself. Amid massive staffing cuts, OCR has dismissed thousands of pending cases, according to a January U.S. Government Accountability Office report. Historically, most OCR cases stemmed from disability discrimination complaints filed by families.The federal education department did not respond to requests for comment for this story. But in a news release this month, the department claimed the Trump administration has made “historic progress” in enforcing Title IX.“Under the Trump Administration, no woman or girl will have to fight alone to secure her basic protections, and we will not relent until Title IX is restored to the fullest extent of the law,” Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said in the news release.The Trump administration’s first investigation was in DenverThe civil rights office launched its Denver investigation several days after a local television news station aired a story in January 2025 about how the conversion of a girls’ restroom at East High School to a multi-stall all-gender one had “caused a stir.”A district spokesperson said students requested the all-gender restroom.“They were running out of time, being late to the next class because the one or two single stall bathrooms that they had to accommodate this just wasn’t enough for the need that was out there,” spokesperson Scott Pribble told 9News. To investigate, OCR sent Denver Public Schools a request for 12 pieces of information, according to documents obtained by Chalkbeat through a public records request. That information included the district’s bathroom policy, a floor plan showing all of the bathrooms at East High, and any complaints the district received about the conversion.“To our knowledge, OCR did not interview any DPS staff,” a DPS spokesperson said.Denver provided 17 emails it had received, Pribble said. Nine expressed concern about the restroom, seven were supportive, and one asked for more information, he said. The civil rights office also asked for the number of students who were tardy to class because of restroom availability before and after the creation of the all-gender restroom.Denver told OCR that it doesn’t track that specific information. But the district did share data showing the total number of tardies at 2,400-student East High went down, not up, after the all-gender restroom was added, the documents show.Seven months into the investigation, Denver did something that district officials hoped would neutralize the Trump administration’s claim that the restroom was discriminatory toward girls: It converted a boys’ restroom at East High into another all-gender restroom.That didn’t help. Days later, OCR found that Denver had violated Title IX. In an 11-page letter to the superintendent, the federal office wrote that the all-gender restroom “had significant deleterious effects” on students and that East High had received “many complaints,” including about boys leering at a girl in the bathroom and pounding on the door of a stall. The letter references written complaints but gives no indication investigators spoke with students.In a statement to Chalkbeat, Denver refuted that reasoning.“They requested all emails on the topic and made their findings based solely on a handful of negative emails,” a district spokesperson wrote. “They did not include the comments from positive emails that had also been shared with them.”OCR’s findings also appear to have been influenced by outside factors. OCR’s letter included a full page of examples from other states, including a 16-year-old in Minnesota who reported seeing a boy in the girls locker room and a 14-year-old in Wisconsin who said she was “exposed to the genitalia” of a transgender student.OCR gave Denver 10 days to revert East High’s all-gender restrooms back to single-sex ones or “risk imminent enforcement action.” That was in August. The district hasn’t complied, nor has it heard anything further from the federal office, a district spokesperson confirmed.The administration is threatening funding in neighboring JeffcoFive months after launching its Denver investigation, OCR turned to neighboring Jeffco Public Schools. The district is home to a politically connected conservative parent group whose founder told local media she shared concerns about district policies with the federal department.The Jeffco investigation also came after several families sued the district over its overnight accommodations policy. One family claimed their 11-year-old daughter was assigned to share a bed with a transgender student on an out-of-state trip. The lawsuit is ongoing.Just like in Denver, OCR asked Jeffco for 12 pieces of information, including the names and contact information for all sports team coaches, documents obtained in a public records request show. But a district spokesperson said OCR never interviewed anyone in Jeffco, either.OCR also asked Jeffco for girls sports team rosters, “identifying on each such roster any participants who are biologically male.” Jeffco sent OCR the rosters, “including the gender provided by students and/or their families,” the district told Chalkbeat. In March, OCR issued a press release that said the rosters indicated “male students occupy 61 roster positions on girls’ sports teams.” Jeffco serves about 74,000 students.A later version of the press release posted on the federal education department’s website walked back that language by adding the words “may” and “up to.” The department did not answer questions from Chalkbeat about why.But Jeffco said recently that the 61 boys on the girls’ rosters were not athletes but “male managers, trainers, or mascots.” The district said OCR never asked to clarify any of the boys’ roles, and that Jeffco didn’t learn of “the confusion” until OCR issued its press release.“OCR did not engage with District staff whatsoever in the eight months after receiving our data submission — contrary to the dialogue we would have expected during an investigation under OCR’s own Case Processing Manual,” Jeffco wrote in a letter to the office in early June.Jeffco said it has “repeatedly and respectfully” asked OCR to correct the error, but the office has refused. The education department declined to comment on the matter to Chalkbeat.The federal civil rights office also asked Jeffco for documentation of instances in which allowing boys to compete on girls sports teams adversely affected female athletes, including any injuries, forfeitures, or cases in which transgender athletes won. Jeffco said it had no such documents.As in Denver, OCR found that Jeffco violated Title IX. And similar to Denver, OCR gave Jeffco 10 days to rescind its policies or risk imminent enforcement action. Jeffco didn’t do that. Three months later, on Friday, the education department announced it was making good on its threat.Jeffco was anticipating it. On Wednesday, the Jeffco school board held a special meeting to authorize potential legal action, should the federal administration try to withhold funding.Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.
