Amid Trump’s funding threats, a rural Colorado school district looks to remove LGBTQ policy protections

*This is reported by Chalkbeat.

Citing President Trump’s threat to cut off federal education funding for school districts that provide protections for LGBTQ people, school board members in the Montezuma-Cortez district in southwestern Colorado are poised to remove sexual orientation and gender identity from the district’s nondiscrimination policy.

“Our district uses federal grant monies and Trump has indicated those grants are at risk if any district continues to support certain previously protected classes like sexual orientation, gender expression, or gender identity,” Mike Lynch, a school board member and the policy committee chair, said at a board meeting late last month.

The proposed policy changes in Montezuma-Cortez represent just one example of how some Colorado school districts are rushing to comply — or over-comply — with federal ultimatums based on questionable legal foundations. Many legal experts say the Trump administration cannot, on its own, exclude transgender people from federal anti-discrimination law and that Colorado law, which includes protections for LGBTQ people, supersedes school district policy anyway.

But efforts to remove protections at the local level send harmful messages about who is valued and who isn’t, they say.

“I think it does damage to queer students because it signals that this school district … doesn’t believe that these students are worthy of protection,” Scott Skinner-Thompson, associate professor of law at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Montezuma-Cortez, a conservative-leaning district with about 2,400 students, has taken other steps to curtail LGBTQ symbols and school activities in recent years. The school board is scheduled to take a final vote on the proposed nondiscrimination policy on June 24.

MB McAfee, a retired social worker and district resident, said she doesn’t know of any case where federal funds were withheld by the Trump administration, but worries about that possibility, particularly when it comes to money for students with disabilities.

But she’s also angry about the proposed policy changes, calling them “another step toward exclusion.”

“If we do that,” she asked, “then what’s going to be next?”

School districts react to funding threats

Trump has targeted transgender rights since his first day in office. In January and February, he issued several executive orders on the topic, including one that describes sex as determined at conception and unchangeable and another that threatens to withhold federal funds from schools that allow transgender girls to play girls sports.

The Trump administration has moved to strip federal funding from Maine because that state allows transgender girls to compete on girls’ teams. A judge blocked the federal government from withholding school lunch money while the case continues.

So far, no school district has lost money because of policies protecting transgender students. But Lynch emphasized that risk when he explained the proposed policy revision to the school board in May.

Asked by Chalkbeat what executive order or federal guidance required the removal of “sexual orientation” from the policy, Lynch later said by email that he’d mistakenly cited the term when he spoke to the board about federal dollars being in jeopardy.

For now though, “sexual orientation” isn’t being restored to the policy, he said.

Montezuma-Cortez isn’t alone in making changes spurred by the Trump administration. Officials from several Colorado districts, including Woodland Park and District 49 near Colorado Springs, have cited Trump’s executive orders in pushing policy changes or other efforts aimed at revoking protections for transgender students.

In May, District 49 sued the state and the Colorado High School Activities Association arguing that Colorado law and the association’s policy violate students’ constitutional rights by allowing transgender youth to play on school sports teams that match their gender identity.

Montezuma-Cortez school board members had little to say about the implications of the proposed nondiscrimination policy changes.

Asked about the legal or practical implications, Lynch said he’s not an attorney and doesn’t know. School board President Sheri Noyes did not respond to Chalkbeat’s request for comment. Vice President Ed Rice declined to respond to specific questions from Chalkbeat, saying by email that the policy’s opening sentence “answers everything.”

As proposed, that sentence says, “The Board is committed to providing a learning and work environment where all members of the school community are treated with dignity and respect.” The current version of the policy says “safe learning and work environment” but the revision takes out the word “safe.”