Todd Blanche, the attorney general, said the justice department filed a lawsuit against a Kansas district over school practices that let transgender students seek different names or pronouns without parents being told. The district denies wrongdoing, and the case could put almost $70m in federal funds at risk if federal law was violated.
Blanche also said on this week, “There’s not a parent in America, no matter where you live, that would want their school to change and call their child by a different name and not expect to be told about that.” He added: “We partnered with the Department of Education recently to combat this very trend and, really, pandemic that’s happening in some school districts around the country.”
Todd Blanche and
Blanche’s comments came after he was confirmed last month, following the ousting of Pam Bondi, and after he had worked as Donald Trump’s personal criminal defense lawyer. In 2024, Trump said in a campaign speech: “Can you imagine … your son leaves the house and you say: ‘Jimmy, I love you so much. Go have a good day in school,’ and your son comes back with a brutal operation? Can you even imagine this?”
The lawsuit is described as a first-of-its-kind action. It targets the internal school guidelines that were never adopted as formal policy, but that state a transgender student’s request not to notify parents about preferred names and pronouns would be reviewed case by case.
Kansas district guidelines
That detail is the core of the dispute. The justice department portrays the case as secret gender transitions at school, while the written guidance described here deals with whether staff evaluate a request for nondisclosure individually before deciding whether to notify parents.
For parents, the practical issue is simple: the case now tests whether a district can keep using internal guidance like this without triggering a federal funding fight. For the district, the immediate risk is financial, not just legal, because almost $70m is on the line if a court finds a federal-law violation.
Which Kansas district
The filing leaves one central point unresolved for readers trying to track the case locally: which Kansas district was targeted by the lawsuit. Until that is identified in the case itself, the immediate stakes are the same — internal guidance over names and pronouns is now the subject of a federal lawsuit with funding consequences attached.
