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President Trump’s targeting of transgender rights as he begins his second term is raising questions about the potential impact on Colorado laws meant to protect transgender students, including a new one that requires educators to use students’ chosen names.
Several school districts, the Colorado Department of Education, and the state Attorney’s General’s Office provided a variation of the same answer when contacted by Chalkbeat: We don’t know yet whether there will be an impact but we are searching for answers.
While experts said executive orders of the kind Trump is using can’t override state laws, they conceded that the legal landscape under Trump is uncertain. Meanwhile, advocates said the orders are seeding fear in the transgender community, which they said was likely the intent.
“I’m receiving a lot of emails from the community about, ‘What does it mean? How does it impact us?’” said Jax Gonzalez, the political director at LGBTQ advocacy organization One Colorado.
“And that is the point of those executive orders,” Gonzalez said. “Those are about scaring people and repressing movement-building.”
Trump has acted quickly to enact his political agenda, including trying to unwind protections for LGBTQ students. An executive order the president signed last week, on the day he was inaugurated, says that the United States only recognizes two sexes, male and female, and that the sexes “are not changeable.” The order rescinded Biden-era guidance on supporting LGBTQ students.
Already, one Colorado school board has passed a resolution echoing that language. On Wednesday, the Woodland Park school board directed the district’s superintendent to update any district policies, procedures, and facility usage guidelines “to be consistent with knowledge that there are only two sexes, male and female.”
This week, the Trump administration froze — and then potentially unfroze, after legal challenges — all federal grant funding to purge the government of what it called “wokeness” and “transgenderism.” Trump signed another executive order on Wednesday blocking federal funding from K-12 schools that teach “gender ideology.”
Ian Farrell, an associate professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, said that while the power of the president is limited and Congress ultimately controls U.S. spending, “we live in a weird time where the correct legal answer and what the [U.S.] Supreme Court will say is the correct legal answer are potentially massively different things.
“We’re in an era where there is genuine uncertainty about whether the rule of law will be upheld,” Farrell said. “That should concern everybody.”
Some districts adopted name change policies begrudgingly
Colorado has in recent years extended legal protections based on gender identity. In 2021, a state law protecting people from harassment and discrimination was expanded to explicitly cover gender identity. The state’s anti-bullying law also includes gender identity as a protected class.
Last year, lawmakers approved and the governor signed a bill that protects K-12 public school students who request to use a name other than their legal name at school. Under the law, it is considered discrimination in Colorado for an educator to refuse to use a name chosen by a student to reflect their gender identity.
The idea came from students. The Colorado Youth Advisory Council, a group of 40 students from across the state, helped draft the bill. Both chambers of the state legislature and the governor’s office are controlled by Democrats, and the bill passed mostly along party lines.
“Colorado prides itself so much on being welcoming, where people are free to be themselves and how they live,” state Rep. Stephanie Vigil, a Colorado Springs Democrat, said at a legislative hearing last year. “We feel like it’s important to act on that.”
Many Colorado school districts have adopted policies to comply with the name change law.
But some did so begrudgingly — and with caveats.
The Woodland Park district, which drew national attention in 2023 for becoming the first district in the country to adopt the conservative American Birthright social studies standards, was one of the first districts to discuss adopting a policy in the wake of the name change law.
One school board member, David Rusterholtz, made clear at a May meeting in which the policy was discussed that the district was “forced” to respond.
He called HB24-1039 “a very bad law” and a violation of his virtues, values, and “Biblical worldview.” He questioned how the law would help a child who he said had been taken up by what he termed “social psychosis.”
It’s unclear whether the resolution adopted by the Woodland Park school board Wednesday that echoes Trump’s language about two sexes will affect the policy the district adopted to comply with the name change law.
Neither a district spokesperson nor school board members responded to questions from Chalkbeat seeking clarification.
“We need to stick with science, and the science has always been that there are two sexes,” Rusterholtz said during Wednesday’s meeting. “We need to teach our children the truth. It doesn’t mean we’re going to accept any kind of bullying.”
Other school boards shared Woodland Park’s concerns about the state’s name change law.
Several board members in El Paso County’s Widefield School District 3 said at a meeting in September that the law amounted to “compelled speech” and “government overreach.” A district spokesperson said last week that district leaders had not yet discussed the potential effects of Trump’s executive orders on district policy.
Members of the District 49 school board in Colorado Springs had similar objections to the law.
“The state apparently feels that it can hand down this unconstitutional mandate and tread upon the First Amendment-protected rights of teachers and staff by compelling them to say things that may be against their personally held conscience-based religious beliefs,” District 49 board member Deb Schmidt said at a meeting in November.
District 49’s policy has several caveats. It says a student’s parents must consent to a non-legal name change by signing a form. It limits students to one name change per year and says the district can say no if a name “is vulgar or offensive, obscene, or is used for misrepresentation.”
The policy also allows what it calls “an accommodation to conscience-based objections to compelled speech” — that is, exceptions for those who object — as long as the accommodation does not result in “substantial increased costs” to the district.
Lori Thompson, president of the District 49 school board, said in an email to Chalkbeat that the board was discussing with the school district’s lawyer how Trump’s executive orders might impact the name change policy. She noted that District 49’s policy has a clause that says it will be “immediately voided in its entirety” if the state law is found to be unconstitutional.
“The one thing that will not change,” Thompson wrote, is that “D49 will not withhold information about a student from their parents or legal guardians.”
Other districts express support for LGBTQ community
Other districts, including Denver Public Schools, Jeffco Public Schools, and Boulder Valley School District, have adopted name change policies that don’t require parental consent. They simply note that refusing to call a student by their chosen name is considered discrimination.
Several such districts said they are taking a wait-and-see approach to how Trump’s executive orders could affect laws and policies meant to protect transgender students.
In a letter to staff on Friday, Denver Public Schools Superintendent Alex Marrero said the district remains committed to following state and federal laws protecting LGBTQ staff and students.
“We value and affirm all DPS humans,” read an information sheet from the district’s legal department that was linked in Marrero’s letter. “You belong here.”
A Boulder Valley School District spokesperson pointed to a resolution passed by the Boulder school board in December that says the district “shall do everything in its lawful powers to protect our LGBTQ students and community members,” among other vulnerable groups.
But attacks on such protections have already begun. On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights said it is investigating Denver Public Schools for converting a girls’ restroom at Denver’s East High School to an all-gender restroom.
Locally, there has been at least one lawsuit over the state’s name change law. Two parents sued Brighton-based 27J Schools for allegedly violating their constitutional rights by allowing their child to use a different name and pronouns at school without their consent. The parents sought to block the state and the school district from enacting the name change law.
A federal judge on Friday rejected the parents’ attempt, in part because the 2024 law wasn’t in effect when their child asked to use a different name and pronouns at school in 2022 and 2023.
“Despite the claim that ‘the District is socially transitioning their children,’ the District is not the decision maker at issue: the student is,” U.S. District Court Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney wrote in her ruling. “The Law and Policies only require the District to follow the student’s chosen name and pronouns and to provide support.”
District Superintendent Will Pierce said in an interview that the district won’t change its policy on student name changes in light of the Trump executive orders — at least not yet. Like many other district leaders, he’s closely watching the legal landscape for guidance.
“There’s not a lot of clarity about what we’re supposed to do next,” Pierce said. “Our response is to do what we always do and try to find a place where every student feels welcome and receives dignity when they walk through the door. They matter.”
Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.
