Defending Ed Files a Civil Rights Complaint Against Hawaii Department of Education for Violations of Title IX and Students’ Free Speech

News Release from Defending Education, 02/09/2026

On February 12, 2026, Defending Ed filed a civil rights complaint against Hawaii Department of Education for violations of both Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX), 20 U.S.C. § 1681 et seq., and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In addition, Hawaii’s speech policies violate the First Amendment’s protections against compelled speech and viewpoint discrimination.

Title IX prohibits discrimination based on sex in any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance. This includes female students’ right to sex-segregated intimate spaces. Nevertheless, the Hawaii Board of Education’s “Guidance on Supports for Transgender Students” requires Hawaii public schools to allow male students to enter girls’ single-sex spaces. The Guidance states that  “[s]tudents should have access to restrooms that correspond to their sincerely held gender identity,”  and that if this makes other students uncomfortable, they may use single-stall restrooms instead.  In other words, the Guidance states that if a male student enters the girls’ bathroom and makes female students feel unsafe, the female students must leave and use different bathrooms. And the Guidance also emphasizes that, unlike the female students using the girls’ bathroom, “[a]  transgender student should not be compelled to use an alternative restroom.”  Hawaii’s Guidance turns Title IX on its head and strips female students of their Title IX rights to single sex intimate spaces.

As if that weren’t enough, Hawaii’s policies also run afoul of the First Amendment. Students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate,”  and public schools may not “prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.” Hawaii, however, does just that, by compelling students to use certain pronouns when the students address their self-described “transgender” peers. The Constitution does not permit such interference with free speech.

PDF: COMPLAINT

PDF: Guidance-TransgenderStudents-Supports.pdf

WT: Hawaii accused of favoring transgender students over girls in federal complaint | Washington Times