Conservative Group Urges Federal Investigation into Alaska School District’s Gender Identity Policy

A conservative legal organization, America First Legal (AFL), has called on the Trump administration to investigate an Alaska school district over policies that allegedly withhold information about students’ gender identities from parents. The complaint, filed Friday with the Education and Justice departments, targets Hoonah City School District’s practice of using students’ legal names and pronouns when communicating with parents, even if students use different names and pronouns at school.

“Hoonah City School District’s nonsensical ‘gender identity’ policies strip parents of their rights, applaud deception, and brazenly violate federal law,” said AFL senior counsel Ian Prior in a statement accompanying the complaint.

The filing represents the latest challenge to school district transgender policies following a significant Supreme Court ruling last month. That decision temporarily blocked California from enforcing policies preventing school staff from notifying parents about their children’s gender identity expressions without student consent.

The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has already demonstrated willingness to investigate such policies. It recently opened a similar probe into Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest school system with over half a million students.

AFL’s complaint against the small K-12 Alaska district argues that the policy “requires school staff to present one identity to parents while facilitating another at school, effectively directing them to deceive parents about their own children.”

This legal challenge parallels a similar threat made last month by the Thomas More Society against New Jersey’s Westwood Regional School District. The conservative legal group, which helped bring the California Supreme Court case, warned it would initiate litigation if the district did not rescind policies allowing schools to withhold students’ gender identity information from parents.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Mirabelli v. Bonta has become a pivotal moment in parent rights litigation nationwide. In that case, parents argued California’s policy infringed upon their religious freedom by requiring school staff to use students’ preferred names and pronouns regardless of parental wishes.

While the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit initially sided with California, the Supreme Court vacated that ruling in a 6-3 decision, with the three liberal justices dissenting. The Court’s majority wrote that California’s policies “cut out the primary protectors of children’s best interests: their parents,” despite the state’s argument that its approach was designed to protect transgender children from potentially abusive parents.

Peter Breen, executive vice president with the Thomas More Society, recently told Fox News Digital that despite the Supreme Court’s decision, the legal battles over these policies are just beginning. “We are already fielding requests from other parents across the country, and we anticipate sending a lot more demand letters, unfortunately,” Breen said.

These legal challenges reflect an intensifying national debate over parental rights, student privacy, and school policies regarding gender identity. As more cases emerge across multiple states, both advocacy groups and government agencies appear poised to reshape how schools navigate these sensitive issues.

The Hoonah City School District, Department of Justice, and Department of Education have not yet publicly responded to requests for comment on the complaint.