The Trump administration on Monday will terminate multiple civil rights settlements aimed at ensuring transgender students’ rights to equal opportunity to an education, forcing school officials to choose whether to comply with the government’s interpretation of federal anti-discrimination laws or to abide by conflicting state statutes.
The terminations, described by three Education Department officials briefed on the changes, are an escalation of the administration’s efforts to enforce President Trump’s executive order that the government recognize only a person’s sex assigned at birth.
The actions show how the administration’s campaign to erase diversity, equity and inclusion policies has sharpened to root out specific civil rights protections, particularly for students participating in school programs or activities based on their gender identity instead of their biological sex.
The Trump administration has opened at least 40 civil rights investigations into educational institutions that provide protections for transgender students. It has also sued state education departments and high school athletic associations in California and Minnesota over policies that permit transgender athletes to participate in school sports. A total of 27 states have restricted the participation of transgender athletes in school sports.
Education Department officials said there was no precedent for the federal government terminating previously negotiated civil rights settlements with schools. Civil rights lawyers who worked under Democratic and Republican administrations said they were unaware of previous examples of such a move.
“To go back and terminate agreements and say all of the policies and procedures should be reversed as if nothing ever happened, that is very different and a very big deal,” said Nancy Potter, a former supervising lawyer at the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights who now runs her own practice.
The terminations will rescind all or portions of six settlements that the Obama and Biden administrations had negotiated, Education Department officials said. They would revoke the federal government’s support for deals with school districts in Delaware, Pennsylvania and Washington State, as well as two school districts and a community college in California.
Kimberly M. Richey, the assistant secretary for civil rights at the Education Department, said in a statement that the changes underscored the Trump administration’s efforts to bar transgender students from girls’ and women’s sports teams and shared restrooms or locker rooms.
“Today is yet another demonstration of the Trump administration’s commitment to uphold the law, protect our students and restore common sense,” Ms. Richey said. “No longer will the federal government force educational institutions to violate the law or punish them for upholding it.”
Several school officials said they had either not yet heard from the Education Department about the changes or signaled that they were uninterested in rescinding the agreements. School boards would have to vote on any change to a district’s policies.
The Trump administration said it was striking portions of a 2023 settlement with Taft College, a two-year community college about 120 miles north of Los Angeles, that required training for faculty and staff members about abiding by a student’s preferred name and pronouns and how refusing could create a hostile academic environment under civil rights law.
Leslie Minor, the interim president of Taft College, said in a statement that the school had settled the case with the Office for Civil Rights three years ago and no further action was required.
One agreement targeted by the department had been in place for more than a decade, including all four years of the first Trump administration. It required a rural school district in northeastern Pennsylvania to provide training for its faculty about gender-based discrimination, among other things.
The district, Delaware Valley, had agreed in 2016 to update its policies and procedures after a transgender student complained about its repeated refusal to comply with a name change and preferred pronouns. The student also objected to being forced to use restrooms and locker rooms based on biological sex instead of gender identity.
But members of the school board raised alarms about the agreement last year, shortly after Mr. Trump signed a series of executive orders aimed at erasing the rights of transgender Americans and others who do not identify as the sex they were assigned at birth.
In November, the Southeastern Legal Foundation, a conservative policy group in Georgia with ties to the Trump administration, sent a letter to Ms. Richey urging the Education Department to terminate its agreement with Delaware Valley.
In February, the department ordered the school district to rescind any policies and procedures stemming from the decade-old agreement or to face an investigation and potential funding cuts. The school board voted last month to overturn the civil rights resolution and comply with the administration’s orders, according to district records.
Carl Will, a member of the Delaware Valley School Board who supports the administration’s push to pare back rights for transgender students, said the move put the district at odds with Pennsylvania laws that protect transgender students from discrimination.
“It puts us in a weird position,” Mr. Will said, adding that the district could not afford to lose millions of dollars in federal support each year.
Education Department officials said they were terminating agreements that were similarly based on gender-related civil rights investigations, including ones with the Sacramento City Unified School District in California; the Cape Henlopen School District in Lewes, Del.; and the Fife School District in Milton, Wash.
Some of those districts were being notified about the terminations on Monday, Education Department officials said.
The Cape Henlopen and Fife districts were on spring break on Monday. The Sacramento district returned on Monday after a weeklong break.
Michael C. Bender is a Times correspondent in Washington.
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