WASHINGTON — The Department of Education launched a civil rights investigation Monday into a North Carolina school district for allowing a transgender student into female-only spaces including locker rooms, The Post has learned.
Female students have claimed that Cabarrus County Schools declined to look into Title IX complaints about one of their high schools letting a biological male watch girls change, with the principal having dismissed their concerns as “too political to address.”
Cox Mill High School student Trista Ruck said at a public school board hearing this past December that the athlete “is a biological male who dresses and acts like a female” and “is on the football and basketball cheer team.”
“That is not the issue,” Ruck went on. “The issue is whenever he dresses and undresses in the women’s locker room and uses the women’s restroom.”
“[A] peer of mine, who is on a sports team, [said] that during scheduled spring workouts for her sport, she was in the locker room changing when she noticed him watching her and the other girls dress and undress,” she also said. “She stated that this made her feel extremely uncomfortable.”
Former Cox Mill principal Chris Myers later told female students they “can go somewhere else” if they felt uncomfortable about having to share intimate spaces with their transgender peer.
Myers later resigned after further claiming “there isn’t anything [the district] can do.”
DOE Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said the probe into Cabarrus County Schools concerned potentially “egregious violations” of female students’ “privacy and safety.”
Richey added that the DOE’s Office of Civil Rights would be “spotlighting the critical civil rights protections that women fought for decades to secure and the Trump Administration’s vigorous commitment to protecting Title IX’s promise for current and future generations of women and girls” throughout June.
“Under the Trump Administration, no woman or girl will have to fight alone to secure her basic protections, and we will not relent until Title IX is restored to the fullest extent of the law,” she also said.
The 1972 law defends equal educational opportunities for women and has other protections against sex-based discrimination.
The conservative group America First Legal had filed a civil rights complaint last month citing the school district’s failure to address the issue.
The Cox Mill kerfuffle is the latest civil rights investigation launched by President Trump’s Education Department.
In January, the department began looking into a Long Island school district where a biological boy sought to compete on a girls’ volleyball team.
One of Trump’s Day One executive orders declared that the male and female sexes are not changeable and mandated that executive branch agents “reflect sex accurately.”
The Biden administration had interpreted Title IX to bar discrimination against perceived gender identity, which a person could designate on official government documents like passports or other forms, regardless of their birth sex.
Cox Mill administrators reportedly claimed to “not have a specific policy” even in 2024 under President Joe Biden and adopted his administration’s interpretation of Title IX, according to America First Legal’s complaint filed with the Education Department and Department of Justice.
Reps for Cabarrus County Schools and current Cox Mill high school principal Meghan Frazier did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
