Why Trump’s Push for Transparency in Public Schools Is a Victory for Parents

• September 8, 2026

A group of children wearing winter clothes sit closely together on benches at a table in a brightly lit room, seen from behind.

(Joshua Lott/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

My kids just started back at school, and as a mom and an attorney defending parental rights, I want to stand up and applaud President Donald Trump’s work to crack down on the extremism and unconstitutional actions of schools from Kansas to Massachusetts.

Trump is right to use every lever of power he has in the Department of Justice and the Department of Education to make it clear to every woke school district that the constitutional rights of parents and students are not waived when they enter a school.

The only way to hold these schools accountable and stop secret gender transitions is for the Trump administration to take a strong stand. Federal statutes don’t give parents the right to sue the schools, so the president is doing it for them.

Trump’s DOJ just sued a Kansas school district for “facilitating secret ‘gender transitions’ for children without their parents’ knowledge or consent.” This “first of its kind” lawsuit was put in place because the school district was violating federal laws, allowing public schools to play parent, and putting children at risk.

And let’s not forget about the many schools now allowing biological boys to enter girls’ bathrooms.

In Massachusetts, a 9-year-old girl in third grade wrote a letter to Trump asking for help because, when she was using the restroom at her public school, a biological male with intact male reproductive parts pushed through her bathroom stall door. When she complained, the school treated her as the problem. As the girl’s dad told the school board, “She went from [being] the victim to being the perpetrator here.”

This abuse of our little girls is outrageous. The constitutional rights of girls and parents don’t end when they walk into school. The ideologies that want to “protect trans rights” are now trampling innocent children who want to feel safe when they use the bathroom or change clothes at school.

In one of our recent Title IX cases in Pennsylvania, our client, Jan Madeira’s special-needs daughter, was faced with using the girls’ bathroom with a biological male or not using it at all. This is unacceptable. This is illegal.

Congress needs to change the laws that currently don’t go far enough to protect a parent’s rights to their child’s information at school about their name, proclaimed gender, and curriculum. None of this should be a secret from a student’s parents.

To force this change in Congress, we need more parents filing complaints with the Department of Justice so that they know what schools are hiding about gender transitioning from parents. We need more brave little girls like the third grader in Massachusetts reaching out to Trump, his administration, and members of Congress to protect their privacy, a constitutional protection for every American.

Parents, as your kids go back to school this year, please remember to talk to them. Ask them about their privacy when using the bathroom or changing for physical education classes. Ask them if there are biological boys allowed to use their girls’ bathroom. Ask them if teachers or counselors are giving them secret surveys about their sexuality or other personal or mental health information that is not being shared with you.

We need more voices demanding protection for our basic freedoms from government control and manipulation or we risk losing them altogether.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

Kimberly Hermann | Contributor

Kimberly Hermann is executive director of Southeastern Legal Foundation, a national, nonprofit legal organization dedicated to defending liberty in the courts of law and public opinion.

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