A public school in Connecticut has become the subject of an investigation by the US Department of Education (DOE) for allowing a transgender student to compete on a women’s varsity team.

According to James Demetriades, the mayor of Cromwell, the DOE has notified the Cromwell school district that the department’s Office of Civil Rights has launched a formal investigation into Cromwell Public School, which is being accused of violating Title IX.

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The DOE previously targeted the school district with the same accusation during Donald Trump’s first presidency in 2019. At the time, a transgender student named Andraya Yearwood had competed on Cromwell’s high school track team and reached state finals. 

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In 2020, federal officials concluded that Connecticut had violated Title IX, leading state leaders to challenge the government. Trump would later lose the bid for his second term as president in the 2020 election. During the first few weeks of then-President Joe Biden’s first term, Biden withdrew support for the lawsuit and rescinded the DOE’s threats to cut federal funding in the district; the lawsuit was soon dismissed.

On May 2 of this year, Craig Trainor, the acting assistant secretary for DOE’s Office of Civil Rights, sent a letter to Cromwell Superintendent Enza Macri informing her of the department’s probe into the district’s policies concerning transgender students. The Connecticut Mirror reported on the letter’s contents. 

Title IX is the federal civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in educational institutions that receive federal funding. Under the Trump Administration, this law, which was created to protect a marginalized group of people, is now being used to target trans people with the administration arguing that allowing trans people to use facilities and compete on teams matching their gender identity poses a threat to women’s safety and their advancement opportunities. It is important to note that trans people make a small portion of the population and there is no definitive scientific evidence validating that trans women have a biological advantage over cisgender women in sports.

If found to violate Title IX, the school in the town of 14,000 people could lose nearly $1 million in federal funding. The town’s school district serves just under 2,000 students.

Upon the mayor’s announcement of the DOE probe, many within the small community, including students and parents, rallied in support of their transgender peers and in protest of the Trump administration’s targeting of trans rights.

Referring to her trans peers, Siena-Umba-Neuwinger, a student at Cromwell High School, told NBC reporters, “They are wonderful, nice people, and they deserve to be treated as everyone else is.”

Simon, a genderfluid student from the high school, told NBC, “When you bring down trans women, it hurts all women, excluding trans people, was, is, and never will be about protecting anyone.”

According to the school district’s board of education, the board isn’t currently planning to change its policies to comply with the administration’s demands. The board says it will need additional time to review changes proposed by the federal agency.

Cromwell Board of Education chairman Celina Kelleher said, “We remain steadfast in supporting all of our students and are committed to upholding policies that prohibit discrimination or harassment on the basis of one’s actual or perceived membership in a protected class.”

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