FCPS Is Spending Megabucks to Defend Discrimination Against Girls

While the Fairfax County Public School System (FCPS) is facing serious budgetary problems, it continues to spend millions of dollars defending its discriminatory transgender policies, which trample on the rights of parents and 99+% of the girls in the school system.

FCPS has one of the most radical transgender policies in the nation.  It permits a biological male to compete in female sports and gives him an absolute right to use the girls’ locker rooms and restrooms if he asserts, even temporarily, that he believes he is female.  If biological females object, the burden is on them to find an alternative time or place to take showers and attend to their private needs.  The policy even permits a biological male to share a room with girls when on activities requiring overnight accommodations.  In addition, the policy permits FCPS to hide a student’s gender dysphoria from his or her parents, and to provide support for gender transitioning behind the parents’ backs.  The policy also requires fellow students to use whatever names or pronouns a transgender student designates, with potentially serious penalties for noncompliance.  FCPS says its policies are “welcoming to all,” but in fact they trample on the rights of the majority in order to satisfy the preferences of a tiny minority.

As previously reported here and elsewhere, the FCPS policies have been challenged in private litigation and, more consequentially, by the U.S. Department of Education, which asserts that the policies violate federal laws protecting the rights of girls in schools receiving federal funding.  But far from moderating its stance, FCPS has dug in its heels.

Fairfax Schools Monitor submitted a request under the Freedom of Information Act on November 12 to to determine how much FCPS is spending to defend its discriminatory conduct, asking for amounts paid since January 2024.  As usual, the process was time consuming.  FCPS initially demanded an up-front payment of $1,120 to obtain copies of the legal bills submitted by its law firms.  Fortunately, we were able to reduce the fee to $122 by agreeing to accept summaries of the amounts paid rather than the invoices themselves.  FCPS partially complied on December 23, but it improperly claimed “privilege” to black out some requested information.  FCPS withdrew its privilege claim after we demonstrated it was invalid.  FCPS then disclosed its fee arrangements on January 7.  In all, it took eight weeks and $122 to get the relevant data.

The documents disclose that FCPS hired two Virginia-based law firms to defend the challenges to its transgender policies brought by private parties.  Between January 2024 and October 2025, FCPS paid $1,181,582 to those firms.

In the dispute with the U.S. Department of Education, FCPS retained a white-shoe, New York City-based firm whose fees may be among the highest in the nation.  Although that firm agreed to discount its standard rates by 25% for FCPS, it is still charging a whopping $1,875 per hour for the time of the primary partner working on the case, and up to $1,200 per hour for the time of associate lawyers.  (This was the firm’s 2025 fees; its fees in 2026 are probably higher.)  The work began in March 2025.  Through October, it charged $867,775 for its services.  In the more recent months, the fees have averaged over $200,000 per month.  The litigation is ongoing; there is no telling how long the fees will continue piling up at this rate.

Taxpayers in Fairfax County have been hit with higher property taxes, and with a new tax on meals and prepared foods, to fund the ever-increasing spending of our local government.  Despite the additional revenue, FCPS is facing a need to cut millions in spending.  Adoption of sensible policies, and avoidance of huge legal bills, offer clear opportunities for fiscal responsibility.  Unfortunately, the ideological priorities of FCPS’s leaders rule out any consideration of these possibilities.

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