DOJ announces investigation into Lansing, two other districts

The federal Department of Justice announced in a news release Wednesday that it had launched investigations into the Lansing School District, Detroit Public Schools Community District and Godfrey-Lee Public Schools.

Godfrey-Lee is in Wyoming, a Grand Rapids suburb, and, at 1.4 square miles, it is the geographically smallest school district in Michigan. Detroit has by far the most students. The three districts represent about 64,000 students, or roughly 5% of Michigan’s 1.3 million K-12 students.

Officials with the three districts did not respond to requests for comment Thursday.

The DOJ declined to address questions from City Pulse, including the timeline and scope of the investigation and whether it was connected to curriculum, district policies or individual incident complaints. It is not clear why those three districts were named; a DOJ spokesperson said the department had no comment beyond the news release.

The Department of Justice said in the release that they are looking into whether those three districts have notified parents of their right to opt out of “sexual orientation and gender ideology content” and whether the districts include any such content in classrooms.

“The investigation will also assess whether the Michigan School Districts limit access to single-sex intimate spaces, such as bathrooms and locker rooms, based on biological sex,” the news release said.

“This Department of Justice is fiercely committed to ending the growing trend of local school authorities embedding sexuality and gender ideology in every aspect of public education,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “Supreme Court precedent is clear: parents have the right to direct the religious upbringing of their children, which includes exempting them from ideological instruction which conflicts with their families’ sincerely held religious beliefs. And Title IX demands that we guard the safety, dignity, and innocence of our youngest citizens—our children—by ensuring that they have unfettered access to bathrooms and locker rooms of their biological sex.”

Dhillon has been involved in conservative causes, including free speech issues and opposition to COVID rules, and she has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to the Washington Post. She was a frequent guest on Fox News and was appointed to lead the department’s Civil Rights Division.

The New York Times said that she was expected to target DEI efforts and to shut down investigations of police misconduct.