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US Department of Education / US Department of Justice
The U.S. Department of Education (ED) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) sent a joint letter to all state Attorneys General reaffirming the Trump Administration’s commitment to protecting parental rights. The letter puts Attorneys General on notice that under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA), parents have the right to know and be informed of the most sensitive and personal information pertaining to their children. ED and DOJ also announced a new enforcement action against the Los Angeles Unified School District in California (LAUSD) for policies that require staff to keep sensitive information hidden from parents.
The Trump Administration’s message is clear: the era of silencing, harassing, and targeting parents is over, and their rights under federal law are non-negotiable. Five years ago, the Biden Administration weaponized the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to investigate parents who attended school board meetings, including setting up a dedicated snitch-line. The infamous October 4th memorandum came after the Biden White House coordinated with the National School Boards Association to label parents as “domestic terrorists.” Today’s letter and enforcement action also come on the same day the DOJ’s Weaponization Working Group released its report exposing the memorandum’s creation.
“Parents are children’s natural providers and protectors,” said Harmeet K. Dhillon, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. “The Biden-Harris DOJ labeled concerned parents as threats for exercising their right to know what was happening at their kids’ schools. This Civil Rights Division stands with parents, and we will continue to partner with the Department of Education to enforce parents’ rights under federal law.”
“Under the Biden Administration, parents were the enemy. They were labeled as terrorists, targeted, and investigated by a government weaponized against them,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “That era is over. The Trump Administration is acting with unprecedented energy and purpose to restore parents’ natural rights as the primary protectors of their children. The Department of Education is committed to fully enforcing FERPA and PPRA. We are grateful to the Department of Justice for partnering with us to hold rogue schools accountable, including the Los Angeles Unified School District, and urge all state Attorneys General to work with us in upholding the letter of the law.”
Additionally, ED partnered with DOJ to take enforcement action against LAUSD for policies that violate FERPA and PPRA. These policies direct district employees to “privately ask the student how they want to be referred to when communicating with parents/legal guardians” and to keep a students’ self-professed “gender identity” “private” or “confidential,” including from parents. LAUSD’s parental secrecy policies have allowed students to make life-altering decisions in secret, unbeknownst to their parents.
Compare this to the Biden Administration that opened several investigations into parents, some of which were led by the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division and Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate. One FBI field office interviewed a mother because she was a member of Moms for Liberty, which it disparaged as a “right wing mom’s group.” Another FBI tip launched an investigation into a father opposed to mask mandates because he “fit the profile of an insurrectionist.”
Read a copy of the letter here.
Background:
FERPA and PPRA are federal privacy laws enforced by the Department’s SPPO. FERPA protects the privacy of students’ education records and safeguards parents’ rights to access their children’s education records, seek amendments to those records, and exercise control over the disclosure of personally identifiable information. PPRA requires schools to provide notification and attain written parental consent when conducting surveys, analyses, or evaluations asking students for certain sensitive and private information such as sex behaviors and attitudes, religious beliefs, mental and psychological problems.
These statutory obligations were emphasized and clarified in the SPPO’s recent Dear Colleague Letters issued in March 2025 and August 2026.
In June 2026, the Department partnered with DOJ to provide more responsive and coordinated enforcement of our nation’s parental and civil rights laws with the goal of continuing investigations uninterrupted while also cutting red tape and expediting enforcement.
Updated October 5, 2026
