Virginia school districts support for transgender students' rights in governor's race spotlight

A move this week by the Loudon County, Virginia, school board to continue to support allowing transgender children to use facilities that do not match their biological sex is front-and-center in the state's gubernatorial election.

"This is absolutely unacceptable," Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, the Republican nominee for governor in this year's election, said in a Fox News Digital interview on Thursday. "Our girl children are simply not safe. Are we erasing women now?"

The Justice Department in President Donald Trump's administration is demanding that Loudon County's school district repeal the policy, and is threatening to pull $50 million in federal funding if the school board doesn't act by Friday.

But the school board, at a meeting Tuesday evening, voted 6-3 to continue to defy the Justice Department by continuing to support Policy 8040, which provides protections for transgender students.

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The Justice Department argues that the policy is in violation of Title IX, which is a half-century-old federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in any education program or activity receiving federal funding.

Loudon County is one of five northern Virginia school districts that face the Friday deadline, along with Alexandria City Public Schools, Arlington Public Schools, Prince William County Public Schools, and Fairfax County Public Schools.

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The Justice Department charges that the school districts' policies, which give students the option to use school bathrooms and locker rooms based on gender identity and not their biological sex, violate Title IX.

Sears, pointing to the Republican sweep of statewide offices in Virginia elections four years ago, said that the school districts have "gone rogue and apparently, they have learned no lessons since 2021, when we first ran, and they must not understand that parents still matter."

Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin spotlighted parents' rights in their children's education in his 2021 gubernatorial victory in a state that had tilted blue for a dozen years.

The Democratic Party 2025 nominee for Virginia governor, former Rep. Abigail Spanberger, took to social media on Wednesday in the wake of the Loudon County school board meeting, to write that "as a mom, I’m so grateful for the hardworking, dedicated Virginians who make sure our children have a safe, positive, and productive school day."

"As Governor, I’ll make sure our educators get the support they need to continue providing a world-class education for our Commonwealth’s kids," Spanberger, a former CIA officer, pledged.

But Sears charged that Spanberger, who is the polling frontrunner in November's election, is playing both sides of the issue.

"What she’s trying to do is have it both ways, because she has supported and voted for biological men in girls’ sports and bathrooms," as she pointed to a past vote in Congress by Spanberger.

"I want parents to know—‘I’m in your corner,’" Sears told Fox News.

And she argued that "Abigail Spanberger won’t even step in the ring to fight for you."