The U.S. Education Department is investigating a Texas school district in which the superintendent was recorded ordering librarians to remove LGBTQ-themed library books.
The Granbury Independent School District is being investigated following a complaint by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas, NBC News, ProPublica, and The Texas Tribune said in a joint report.
An Education Department spokesperson confirmed the probe and said it was related to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits schools from discriminating on the basis of sex, gender, and sexual orientation, the report said.
The probe appears to be the first explicitly tied to the banning of school library books dealing with sexuality and gender and education legal experts told the media outlets.
The ACLU in July filed a complaint that accused the district of violating a federal law prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender. The complaint largely was based on an NBC News/ProPublica/Tribune report in March that revealed that Granbury Superintendent Jeremy Glenn instructed librarians to remove books dealing with sexual orientation and people who are transgender.
"I acknowledge that there are men that think they're women and there are women that think they're men," Glenn told librarians in January, according to a leaked recording that was verified.
"I don't have any issues with what people want to believe, but there's no place for it in our libraries."
The report also said Glenn told the librarians he was focused specifically on removing books geared toward queer students.
"It's the transgender, LGBTQ and the sex — sexuality — in books," he said, according to the recording, the media outlets reported.
ACLU attorney Chloe Kempf said the Education Department's decision to open the investigation signals that the agency is concerned about anti-LGBTQ policies and book removals nationally.
"In this case it was made very clear, because the superintendent kind of said the quiet part out loud," Kempf told the news outlets. "It's pretty clear that that kind of motivation is animating a lot of these policies nationwide."
Granbury schools could be required to make policy changes and submit to federal monitoring if it is found to have violated students' rights.
Legal experts said the Education Department's decision to investigate Granbury is significant because it sets up a test of the ACLU's argument that book removals can create a hostile environment for certain classes of students.
"It's certainly the first investigation I've seen by the agency testing that argument in this way," TNG Consulting's W. Scott Lewis, whose consulting firm advises school districts on complying with federal civil rights laws, told the media outlets.
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