Education Department Probes Wisconsin School District Over Restroom Policy

The U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) said on March 5 it is investigating the New Richmond School District in Wisconsin over allegations that the district allowed boys to use girls’ restrooms.

The OCR said the probe will assess whether the New Richmond School District violated Title IX by allowing students to use intimate facilities “based on ‘gender identity,’ not biological sex.”

Title IX is a federal law that bars discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance.

The OCR said that multiple parents have raised concerns about boys being allowed to use the girls’ restroom and questioned the school board about their daughters’ safety, but administrators failed to address these concerns.

Last month, a school board member proposed a policy requiring students to use restrooms and locker rooms based on their biological sex, but it failed to gain enough support, receiving only two votes from the seven-member board, according to the OCR.

“Young women should never be forced to share intimate spaces with boys and men because school leaders care more about radical gender ideology than protecting girls’ safety, dignity, and privacy,” OCR Assistant Secretary Kimberly Richey said in a statement.

“School board members who ignore these allegations are failing the families they serve. This administration will investigate this complaint fully and address any violations it discovers promptly.”

The Epoch Times reached out to the New Richmond School District for comment, but did not receive a response by publication time.

The OCR opened several Title IX probes last year into other schools, including five school districts in Northern Virginia.

The investigations into Title IX violations follow President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20, 2025, executive order recognizing only the two sexes and directing federal agencies to designate intimate spaces by sex rather than gender identity.

“Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong,” Trump wrote in his order.

Cory Brewer, deputy counsel at the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, welcomed the OCR’s investigation, saying it would help enforce Title IX and protect girls’ privacy at the school.

“For too long, school districts in Wisconsin have allowed policies that force young girls to share private spaces with biological males,” Brewer said in a statement. “The Department of Education should continue to press for full enforcement of Title IX across the state.”