"We Cannot Do This Alone": JeffCo Schools Asks CO Gov and AG For Help Against Trump's Anti-Trans Threats
“It's impossible for me to put a price tag on protecting the dignity and humanity of our students,” one school board member told Erin in the Morning.
Upwards of 74,000 Colorado students are the latest political pawns being held hostage by the Trump administration’s escalating war on trans kids.
Despite following the very same laws as every other public school in Colorado, Jefferson County Public Schools, known as Jeffco, has been the target of anti-trans ire for some time now. It is the second largest district in Colorado. It is also one of at least 18 schools that federal officials have been investigating for so-called violations of Title IX, threatening to block school funding unless they promise to discriminate against trans athletes.
Now, district leadership has called on Governor Jared Polis, Attorney General Phil Weiser, and Colorado Education Commissioner Susana Córdova to support their fight to protect students.
“Our immediate ask is for your voice in the form of public support for our district and its students,” a letter from the district to state officials, which was obtained by Erin in the Morning, reads. (It can be read in full at the bottom of this article.)
Colorado schools are already facing a ballooning financial crisis.“We now face spending tens of thousands of our scarce dollars to protect our federal funding in what is, undoubtedly, a proxy fight in defense of Colorado law,” the letter continues. “We cannot do this alone.”
Neither the Polis nor Córdova replied to questions about whether they would provide further support to Jeffco; the Attorney General declined to comment.
Jeffco’s rallying cry comes after multiple threats from the federal Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR). Last week, the school board voted to authorize funding for a potential legal battle as “a proactive step to ensure our legal team can protect the district if necessary,” District lawyers told Colorado Public Radio.
The standoff came to a head on Friday, when the OCR sent its third letter of its kind in under two years.
“Today’s action makes clear that continued noncompliance will be met with accountability and consequences,” said Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey. But seemingly arbitrary deadlines set by other letters to the district have come and gone, and Jeffco is still standing, federal funding and all.
In its recent letter to state officials, the board emphasized that transgender rights were added to the books nearly two decades ago, and that it’s been supported by case law since.
“In June of 2013, the Civil Rights Division–with the advice and counsel of the Attorney General’s Office–held that a school district violated the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA) by forcing a transgender girl to use the boys’ restroom,” the letter reads, referring to Mathis v. Fountain-Fort Carson.
“In the wake of the Mathis decision, Jeffco Public Schools memorialized its compliance in a formal written Policy Regulation,” the letter continues. “It is this regulation that OCR attacks as a violation of Title IX based on 2025 orders from the White House. It is cold comfort to Jeffco that a federal appellate court in Minnesota noted that Executive Order 14201 does not reflect settled law; the threat to Jeffco remains.”
Last month, it adds, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in Boe v. Children’s Hospital that “Colorado institutions may not disregard CADA even in the face of enforcement threats based on federal policy pronouncements not grounded in statute or rule. Now, OCR demands that we change course, while the Boe decision prohibits us from doing so.”
Tim Heaphy, an attorney representing the district, told The Denver Gazette that if the OCR does follow through on its threats, Jeffco is prepared to put up a fight and file an injunction.
The OCR, on its part, has been allegedly dodging remediation efforts, according to a statement from Jeffco’s Executive Director of Communication, Devra Ashby. The agency reportedly cancelled a planned meeting with the district, and then issued a public Letter of Impending Enforcement Action.
“This issue is not unique to Jeffco. It is an attack on Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA),” Ashby said. “We have repeatedly asked the OCR how Colorado schools are supposed to follow both Colorado law and OCR’s interpretation of Title IX, which is not legally binding. Instead of continuing that conversation, OCR ended negotiations.”
All public schools in the state are bound by CADA, but Jeffco seems to have been singled out as a result of manufactured right-wing media fervor. The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group, represented parents who sued the district in 2025, saying cisgender kids’ rights were violated because transgender kids were awarded those same rights. The ADF functionally argues that parents are entitled to know the intimate medical details about any given transgender child if that child might come into contact with their own child.
In spite of the financial crisis facing Colorado schools, Jeffco board member Erin Kenworthy said she was proud to authorize funds for a potential legal fight. “It’s impossible for me to put a price tag on protecting the dignity and humanity of our students,” Kenworthy told Erin in the Morning, noting she was speaking in an individual capacity—not as a spokesperson for the board’s official stance.
“I cannot imagine that the legal costs incurred would come close to what we stand to lose if we don’t defend ourselves,” she said.
As of this writing, the OCR’s primary talking point remains transgender athletes, specifically on girls’ teams. But because it appears there are no trans girls on women’s teams anyways, Trump officials manufactured one—or rather, 61 of them, claiming to have found this number of “male students” on Jeffco’s girl’s athletics rosters.
In reality, it appears none of the people on that list were trans student athletes; most were not even students. The individuals singled out were men on the coaching and training staff, or simply those appointed as team mascots.
“Since that moment, we have repeatedly and respectfully asked the OCR to address this factual error,” Jeffco said at the time. “They have declined to do so.”
All of this is in lockstep with conservative efforts to bastardize Title IX, the bedrock of gender-based civil rights protections in public schools, to fit an anti-trans agenda. The White House argues that Title IX not only permits trans exclusion, but mandates it.
Jeffco reiterated its commitment to upholding equal rights. “We will not violate Colorado law, and we will not abandon our obligations to any student in this district,” Jeffco declared. “Every student deserves to belong here.”
See the full letter here:
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“It's impossible for me to put a price tag on protecting the dignity and humanity of our students” this simple statement brought actual tears to my eyes
I am so inspired that there are adult allies who support our trans kids in this very dark chapter in American history.