New York City is taking the Trump administration to court over a decision to claw back $47 million in federal funds because of public schools’ transgender policies.
The federal lawsuit, filed Thursday, claims the already-promised funding grants can’t be revoked by the US Education Department because the feds’ justification relies on a misreading of civil rights laws.
Federal education officials said in a letter last month that city schools’ bathroom policies accommodating transgender students were in violation of Title IX sex-discrimination laws. It said the city could lose the millions in magnet school funding unless the longstanding policies are overhauled.
But the suit points out that the feds — including the first Trump administration — have for years confirmed the city Department of Education was in compliance with sex discrimination laws.
The feds’ recent announcement is “a blatant attempt” by the feds to skirt the proper procedures for making decisions that could affect roughly 7,700 school students, the city’s suit claims.
Any change would also violate state and local laws which mandate public schools allow access to bathrooms for students based on their gender identity, the city said.
“The abrupt about-face by the Department, seemingly based on the Trump Administration’s fixation with upending the Department’s previously accepted interpretation of Title IX puts politics before public schools,” the lawsuit states.
The complaint, filed in Brooklyn federal court, seeks a temporary halt to the funding cuts while the suit plays out.
Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos said the lawsuit was “fighting back against the US Department of Education’s attack on our magnet program and transgender and gender expansive students.”
The city’s top lawyer, Muriel Goode-Trufant, said Trump admin officials were “trying to unlawfully coerce New York City Public Schools into changing its policies.”
Mayor Eric Adams was conspicuously absent from his office’s own press release about the lawsuit, and has publicly voiced his own bathroom skepticism recently, saying, on the same day feds sent their demand letter, that “I’m not for boys going into the same bathroom with little girls.”
“I’m not quite sure why people think it’s all right for a young man in high school to go into a shower where young girls are,” Adams told reporters at another event in September.
“Mayor Adams will always fight for our city’s one million public school students, no matter what,” a City Hall spokesperson told The Post.
Despite not providing a quote for the press release announcing the lawsuit, Adams later made several social media posts in support of the case.
“The federal government is demanding our @NYCSchools do something they CANNOT do,” the first post reads, “break state and local laws.”
