The U.S. Office of Special Counsel confirmed on June 9 that Biden-era Education Department officials deliberately ignored a binding federal court order blocking gender-identity enforcement under Title IX, and is now urging discipline, a full audit, and public disclosure.
A federal watchdog told President Trump and Congress on June 9 that Biden administration officials inside the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights deliberately defied a binding court order, enforcing a gender-identity interpretation of Title IX in states where a federal judge had explicitly prohibited it. The disclosure could trigger formal discipline for current and former federal employees and a comprehensive audit of enforcement actions that never should have happened.
OSC Chief Counsel Charles Baldis laid it out plainly in his letter to the White House and Capitol Hill. "The agency fully substantiated the allegations," Baldis wrote, citing a supplemental internal investigation that confirmed the claims of Timothy Mattson, a whistleblower inside the Office for Civil Rights. Baldis added that the substantiated findings, that "senior leadership directed or facilitated the circumvention of a binding federal injunction over multiple years and across multiple offices," raise serious concerns that demand accountability.
The injunction at the center of the case dates to July 2022. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee blocked the Education Department from using Biden-era Title IX guidance in the states that had sued over it. That guidance reinterpreted the word "sex" in Title IX to cover sexual orientation and gender identity. The Sixth Circuit upheld the block in 2024. The covered states included Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Montana, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia, among others, where OCR had no legal authority to enforce the Biden administration's interpretation.
Mattson's disclosures detail how the defiance played out in practice. One of the clearest examples involved Owasso Public Schools in Oklahoma, a state explicitly covered by the injunction. According to the whistleblower's account, an enforcement director changed the stated subject of an OCR investigation from "sex stereotypes," a legally permissible basis for action, to "gender identity," the category the court had explicitly barred. Owasso ultimately entered into a resolution agreement with OCR in November 2024, an agreement the current Education Department has since described as illegal and rescinded, according to The Center Square.
The same pattern reportedly played out across multiple regional offices over multiple years. Rather than halting enforcement in covered states once the injunction took effect, OCR leadership found ways to keep pressure on schools, relabeling investigations or working through alternative procedural routes. Cases tied to the violations involved schools in at least eleven plaintiff states, according to reporting by The Center Square and Just the News.
What Comes Next
Baldis outlined concrete steps in his June 9 letter. He urged the Education Department to complete its internal investigation, impose discipline on any current or former employees found to have participated in the violations, conduct a full audit of OCR enforcement actions taken in covered states during the relevant period, and make the results public. He also recommended a possible monetary award for Mattson, citing the significance of the disclosure and the professional risk the whistleblower took in coming forward.
Whether the Justice Department opens a contempt or obstruction inquiry remains an open question. The OSC letter establishes a documented record of a federal agency ignoring a court order at the direction of senior leadership, which is precisely the kind of factual predicate that typically precedes a contempt referral. The Education Department under the current administration has not announced whether it will make a criminal referral to DOJ, though the OSC's explicit call for full public disclosure suggests the legal and political pressure to act will only intensify.
The stakes reach beyond the legal process. More than a dozen states went to federal court specifically to shield their schools from gender-identity mandates that their officials, parents, and elected leaders had rejected. Federal bureaucrats then, according to a now-substantiated whistleblower, continued that enforcement in defiance of the judges who had ruled against them. The audit Baldis is requesting would for the first time put hard numbers on how many schools were targeted in violation of those court protections, and which officials gave the orders. That accounting, whenever it arrives, will be difficult for either party in Washington to set aside.
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