Parents Vs. Policy: Showdown In Schools

Children in a classroom focused on their smartphones

When a state’s chief education officer says it is “quite simply inaccurate to say biologically that there are only boys and there are only girls,” he is not merely commenting on science; he is staking out how law, medicine, and educational policy must intersect for every student in that state’s public schools.

Key Points

Washington State Superintendent Chris Reykdal publicly argues that human sex is not a strict boy/girl binary, citing intersex conditions and chromosomal and hormonal variation as evidence of a biological continuum.
Washington law has prohibited discrimination on the basis of gender identity for nearly two decades, and Reykdal maintains that school policies must follow this state framework even as federal officials move back toward “biological sex” language.
OSPI’s gender-inclusive guidance, including allowing students to participate in activities consistent with their gender identity, has triggered federal investigations and sharp criticism from some lawmakers and parents.
This clash in Washington illustrates a broader national realignment: shifting Title IX interpretations, parental-rights campaigns, and emerging case law on school privacy and transgender students are now colliding in K–12 policy.

From Biology Claim to Policy Position

In February 2025, Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal released a video responding to new federal actions aimed at curbing diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in education. In that statement, he framed the debate over transgender and gender-diverse students first and foremost as a biological question. “It is quite simply inaccurate to say biologically that there are only boys and there are only girls,” he said, pointing to a continuum that includes children born intersex and children whose chromosomes and hormones do not align neatly with the sex recorded at birth.

This is a notable move for a public official: instead of treating gender identity purely as a social or psychological phenomenon, Reykdal anchors his position in biological variation. Intersex conditions—where sex characteristics, chromosomes, or hormone patterns diverge from typical male/female profiles—are well documented in medical literature; his argument is that these realities undermine any claim that biology itself guarantees a clean, two-category system. From that premise, he proceeds to policy: Washington, he stresses, has state laws that allow students to identify and participate in school activities according to their gender, not simply their sex designation at birth.

Reykdal’s biological framing is not an abstract academic point. It is his justification for why state nondiscrimination mandates on gender identity should set the floor for how schools treat students, even as federal policy winds back toward narrower sex-based definitions.

Washington’s Legal Framework on Gender Identity in Schools

Washington’s statutory posture is unusually clear and longstanding. The state banned discrimination on the basis of gender identity in 2006, extending protections in employment, housing, and public accommodations; those protections were then applied to public education. OSPI has, over time, translated that mandate into concrete guidance: students may use names, pronouns, facilities, and participate in programs consistent with their gender identity, and districts are expected to ensure that gender-diverse students are not excluded or harassed on that basis.

In an April 2025 news release responding to a U.S. Department of Education investigation, Reykdal underscored that these gender-inclusive school policies are not discretionary; they are state law obligations. The Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction argues that affirming gender diversity—rather than forcing students into a rigid binary—contributes to safer, more authentic educational environments. This view aligns with research showing transgender and nonbinary youth experience higher rates of school harassment and benefit measurably from gender-affirming practices, including consistent pronoun use and access to facilities matching their identity.

Accordingly, Reykdal’s office has advised districts to treat gender identity as a protected characteristic, akin to race or disability, and to structure athletics, extracurricular participation, and recordkeeping with those protections in mind. This is the operational context in which his biological statement lands: it supports a legal and administrative framework already in force in Washington.

Federal Pushback: Investigations, Funding Threats, and Title IX

The tension arises because federal agencies have shifted back toward enforcing Title IX on the basis of “biological sex” rather than gender identity. After a federal court vacated the Biden administration’s broader Title IX rules, the U.S. Department of Education announced it would return to the 2020 regulations, which emphasize sex assigned at birth and explicitly framed protections in terms of biological females in certain contexts like athletics.

In parallel, the Department issued new guidance and “Dear Colleague” letters indicating that failure to align programs—including sports and privacy practices—with these sex-based interpretations could trigger investigations or jeopardize federal funding. That is precisely what happened in Washington. The U.S. Department of Education opened a broad investigation into OSPI over complaints from districts required to allow transgender girls to compete in girls’ sports and use girls’ locker rooms, citing “substantial Title IX concerns” and possible conflicts with FERPA and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment.

Reykdal, in his video and subsequent statements, describes these moves as attempts to “eliminate and wipe out all things diversity, equity, and inclusion,” including protections for trans youth. He insists that state agencies and school districts cannot simply abandon gender-identity protections because federal enforcement priorities have changed. In his view, Washington’s constitutionally grounded right to public education and its civil-rights statutes set minimum obligations that remain binding irrespective of federal policy drift.

Local and National Opposition: Parental Rights and Sex-Category Claims

Reykdal’s stance has drawn organized opposition from several directions. In Washington, Republican lawmakers have pressed him on school policies that keep some gender-identity information confidential from parents, arguing there is “no meaningful difference” between gender identity and other aspects of a child’s wellbeing that schools typically disclose. They tie their critique to a broader parental-rights movement asserting that schools should not socially transition students or recognize new names or pronouns without explicit parental consent.

At the same time, conservative advocacy organizations and some parents frame the issue in strictly binary biological terms. Commentators and critics have asserted that humans have two gamete types and that sex categories—male and female—are fixed and foundational, particularly for sports, privacy, and safety. Social-media reactions to Reykdal’s statement often emphasize gametes and reproductive anatomy as the “real” biology, rejecting the idea that intersex variation undermines the basic two-sex schema.

These arguments feed into litigation and policy campaigns elsewhere to preserve single-sex teams and spaces defined by sex assigned at birth. The U.S. Supreme Court has recently upheld states’ rights to restrict women’s and girls’ sports to “biological females,” reinforcing the legal plausibility of policies that diverge sharply from Washington’s gender-identity-based participation rules. Critics in Washington point to that precedent and accuse Reykdal of “refusing to follow Title IX Federal Laws” while demanding that districts comply with his office’s gender-inclusive requirements.

Science, Sex, and the Language of “Binary”

The scientific question at the root of Reykdal’s claim is not whether male and female exist as categories—they do—but whether biology can be accurately described as containing only those two discrete, unambiguous types. Medical and biological research has long documented intersex conditions, chromosomal variations (such as XXY or X0), and hormonal profiles that complicate assignment into strictly male or female categories at birth.

Reykdal’s assertion—that “there are children who are born intersex, there are children whose chromosomes and their hormones aren’t consistent with their sex at birth”—reflects this literature. In that sense, he is using “binary” in a strong, categorical way: the claim he rejects is that biology produces only two completely distinct, internally consistent sexes, with no exceptions. His language about a continuum is an attempt to capture the range of phenotypes and endocrine patterns observed in humans over time, not to erase the existence or importance of male and female categories.

Opponents often respond by distinguishing between typical developmental pathways and atypical variation, arguing that intersex conditions do not invalidate the binary but exist as rare deviations from it. That is a philosophical and definitional dispute more than a factual one. The underlying data—about the existence of intersex traits and chromosomal diversity—are not in serious scientific dispute. What differs is how those data are used to justify policy in settings like school sports and facilities.

School Privacy, Harms, and the Stakes for Students

Beyond athletics and locker rooms, the Washington controversy maps onto a wider set of questions about privacy and harm. Many districts across the country now have written policies that authorize or require staff to withhold a student’s asserted gender identity from parents, typically when disclosure might expose the student to rejection or abuse at home. Federal guidance on parental access to education records, by contrast, emphasizes that parents generally have a right to review documents, including those related to counseling or identity questions, unless specific legal exceptions apply.

Research raises real concerns about the consequences of forced disclosure. Analyses from institutions such as the Williams Institute suggest that policies requiring schools to out transgender students to their parents can increase rates of family rejection, homelessness, and mental-health crises. Advocates for transgender students therefore argue that gender-affirming school policies, including confidentiality in some circumstances, are not ideological indulgences but protective measures grounded in empirical evidence about risk.

Reykdal’s insistence that schools “affirmatively support gender diversity” is consistent with that body of work. Yet it sits uneasily alongside parental-rights narratives that see any barrier between parents and information about their children as a violation of family autonomy. The Washington case illustrates that these are not abstract disagreements; they show up in the everyday practices of school counselors, classroom teachers, coaches, and registrars.

Why Washington’s Fight Matters Beyond One State

What is happening in Washington is part of a much broader pattern. More than a thousand school districts across 38 states and D.C. now enforce policies relating to gender identity and student privacy; many are being challenged by parents and advocacy groups who argue that these policies infringe parental rights or violate Title IX. At the same time, federal courts and agencies are oscillating between interpretations that include gender identity under “sex discrimination” and interpretations that restrict protections to biological sex at birth.

Reykdal’s biological claim, and the state’s insistence on gender-identity protections, show what happens when a jurisdiction chooses to build its education policy on a continuum model of sex and gender rather than a strict binary. It affects who can play on which team, which locker room a student can use, how records are kept, and when—and whether—parents are informed of a child’s social transition at school. It also tests the limits of federal leverage: how far the U.S. Department of Education can go in threatening funds before running into state constitutional guarantees and civil-rights provisions.

For families, educators, and policymakers outside Washington, the key is not to fixate on one sentence about biology, but to understand the structure underneath it. Acknowledging biological diversity is being used here to justify robust legal protection for gender identity; opposing that move typically involves reaffirming a binary conception of sex tied to reproductive anatomy and using that conception to preserve sex-segregated domains. The Washington dispute is where those two worldviews meet the practical realities of K–12 schooling.