The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Wednesday its investigation into three Michigan school districts — Lansing, Detroit Public, and Godfrey-Lee Public — to see whether parents were given their right to opt their students out of learning so-called “sexual orientation and gender ideology (SOGI) content” in pre-K-12 classes.

The DOJ is “fiercely committed to ending the growing trend of local school authorities embedding sexuality and gender ideology in every aspect of public education,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon wrote in a statement about the DOJ’s investigation.

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Dhillon’s statement specifically referenced Mahmoud v. Taylor, the 2025 Supreme Court decision, which said that schools must allow religious parents to opt their children out of any lessons acknowledging that LGBTQ+ people exist.

The court agreed with the parents’ claim that their First Amendment rights were violated when schools used books that included LGBTQ+ characters. The existence of queer people contradicts some parents’ religious beliefs and, thus, violates their First Amendment right to direct their children’s religious upbringing, the court said.

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Free speech and LGBTQ+ advocates denounced the court’s ruling, saying that it forces public schools to exempt students from any lessons at all that don’t align with their families’ personal religious or cultural beliefs, including public education on wide-ranging topics llike Earth Day, critical thinking, and anti-drug programs.

“Supreme Court precedent is clear: Parents have the right to direct the religious upbringing of their children, which includes exempting them from ideological instruction which conflicts with their families’ sincerely held religious beliefs,” Dhillon wrote in her statement.

She added, “Title IX demands that we guard the safety, dignity, and innocence of our youngest citizens — our children — by ensuring that they have unfettered access to bathrooms and locker rooms of their biological sex.” However, it’s unclear whether the DOJ is investigating any of the school districts for having transgender-inclusive policies.

Title IX is the federal law that bans discrimination on the basis of sex in education. Former President Joe Biden’s administration interpreted that law as banning anti-trans discrimination in schools since it’s impossible to discriminate on the basis of gender identity without taking sex into account. However, the current administration has interpreted Title IX as forbidding trans-inclusive policies as harmful to the privacy of cisgender female students.

Dhillon’s statement suggested that the Trump administration may deny federal education funding to the state if districts are found to have violated Title IX or Mahmoud v. Taylor. The administration has already investigated numerous states’ trans-inclusive school policies for allegedly violating Title IX.

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