Trump administration scrubs gender-based bullying data from school civil rights survey

The Trump administration has removed data on nonbinary students and bullying based on gender identity from the latest federal civil rights survey covering U.S. public schools.

The Education Department released the update this week for the 2023-2024 school year. The survey had included “nonbinary” alongside male and female, but every field related to gender identity now carries a code reading “Suppressed in Compliance with Executive Order.” The code refers to an executive order President Donald Trump signed on his first day in office directing the federal government to define sex as only male or female.

The suppressed information included allegations of harassment or bullying based on gender identity, whether school districts had written policies against such conduct, and links to those policies. The survey also sought to document issues including harassment, sports participation and discipline involving transgender and nonbinary students.

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We’re losing the granular experience of those kids.

Seth Galanter, a former Education Department civil rights attorney, said only districts that already collected information about trans and nonbinary students had been required to report it. About 1,800 of more than 13,000 U.S. school districts reported such data in the previous collection. “We’re losing the granular experience of those kids,” Galanter said. “They exist in the world, their schools acknowledge their existence, but we now no longer have any way to have any kind of local, state or national picture about these kids and what their school experience is like.”

The Education Department said its Office for Civil Rights would release more data in the coming weeks and was realigning its functions with its statutory mandate. The data change comes as the White House pursues broader efforts targeting protections and accommodations for transgender and nonbinary students, including a Justice Department lawsuit against a school system in Kansas City, Kansas.

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They exist in the world, their schools acknowledge their existence, but we now no longer have any way to have any kind of local, state or national picture about these kids and what their school experience is like.