Massachusetts’ Westford Public Schools district is continuing a transgender bathroom policy in defiance of President Donald Trump’s executive order mandating that a public school’s sex-specific facilities be assigned based on sex, not so-called gender identity. Certain school districts were bound to defy the order as soon as it was signed, but the way the administration and the Department of Education (DOE) respond next is crucial.
So far, the administration appears to be handling this correctly. The DOE has launched an investigation into the district over its policy following a complaint from America First Legal (AFL). The complaint alleges that Westford Public Schools is not only allowing students to use bathrooms and locker rooms based on their claimed gender identity rather than sex, but is silencing dissenting parents and forcing uncomfortable students to comply.
“We will not allow our girls to be silenced or harmed by WPS’s ‘gender identity’ policy. The Department of Education’s investigation rightfully sends a clear message to schools across the country: Title IX will not be sacrificed on the altar of gender ideology,” AFL told Fox News regarding the district’s policy of allowing boys in girls’ private spaces.
This district apparently hopes the administration is bluffing. Its officials want the admin to either let them maintain their policy, and show other districts what they can get away with, or cause a scene they can spin (think federal officials policing bathroom stalls). Neither option is the right one, and the admin shouldn’t take the bait. But there’s a way to win this fight, which will not only place the administration on the right side of history, but win the public mind in the process.
Whatever the Trump administration is accused of when standing firm for women and girls, the Biden administration has done far worse. Under that administration’s redefinition of Title IX, it withheld funds for school lunches from districts that refused to comply with its “gender identity” edicts. The left is never afraid of looking too mean in defense of their notions about sex and gender ideology. With reality on their side, the present administration shouldn’t be afraid either.
The executive order the district is defying states that “[f]ederal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology. Each agency shall assess grant conditions and grantee preferences and ensure grant funds do not promote gender ideology.” To ignore this Massachusetts district’s defiance would render the administration toothless in its fight to “defend women from gender ideology extremism.”
Those with no stomach for the fight will balk at the idea of leaving a school district without federal funding due to a policy that violates the rights and privacy of women and girls. But no good thing has ever happened easily, and matters of public policy are no exception. When protecting females against gender extremism, the administration is not just fighting Westford Public Schools, it is fighting more than a decade of gender propaganda that has rewired many to prioritize the feelings of transgender-identifying men over the rights of females.
But while it is true that the American public has been widely propagandized by the transgender lobby, a deeper moral compass still exists within us. The instinct to protect women and children runs deep. It is one of those instincts that nearly everyone — from feminists to traditionalists — will agree is important.
In the fight against this school district’s policies, the Trump administration’s job is to reframe the narrative about federal funding for schools that prioritize radical gender ideology. The DOE has to show the American public that the real issue here is not the rights of “marginalized” gender nonconformists, but the rights and comforts of women and girls.
Just a few days ago, the Trump administration reversed agreements with five school districts that had operated under a Biden-era definition of Title IX that did not require protecting girls’ sports from trans-identifying males. The decision marked a significant escalation regarding what the administration was willing to do to preserve biological reality.
Already, some districts have responded by complying with the executive order. While some are predictably and belligerently defying the order, for many districts it really is as simple as the federal government calling their bluff. Few were willing to take their gender extremism to its logical end.
Besides that, it’s likely the public favors Trump’s DOE standing up for women and girls. The leftists’ march toward insanity has left vast swaths of Americans misaligned with their cultural aims.
Indeed, Pew Research found that Americans have become more supportive of laws like those requiring trans-identifying individuals to compete in the sports categories consistent with their sex since about halfway through the Biden administration. The study found in 2025 that a full 66 percent of Americans support laws protecting girls’ sports, and 56 percent say doctors shouldn’t be able to perform transgender procedures on minors. (Even major medical associations are starting to backpedal on their full-throated support of such interventions.)
These school districts know there is a very good chance voters won’t stand with them on this issue. The success of initiatives barring men from women’s sports, locker rooms, bathrooms, and so forth is largely due to a general public unease with the idea of any policy that harms women, particularly one that makes them real or potential victims of sexual assault. The administration can build on that here, using the districts that have already complied with their enforcement of a pre-Biden era definition of Title IX as an encouraging example of what can be won with a little fortitude.
While it may be tempting to view the action of this school district as evidence we are losing the fight, this is actually what winning would have looked like all along. The opponents of biological reality were never going to go down easily.
The DOE should pursue every reasonable legal remedy it can to stop persistent gender ideology in schools, up to and including removing federal funding. The fate of women, and biological truth itself, depends upon it.
Sarah Wilder is a writer, wife, and mom-to-be based in southwest Michigan. She is a graduate of Hillsdale College. Formerly a reporter at the Daily Caller, her work has been featured in The American Conservative, National Review, Chronicles Magazine, and others.
