DALLAS — The U.S. Department of Education opened a civil rights investigation into Granbury ISD, a North Texas district where officials removed books with LGBTQ themes.
NBC News reported Tuesday that the department’s Office for Civil Rights notified Granbury school officials earlier this month that it began a probe into administrators’ actions. It came after the ACLU of Texas alleged that the district violated federal anti-discrimination law.
NBC News, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune previously reported on a secret recording of Granbury superintendent Jeremy Glenn in which he told librarians to remove books related to LGBTQ issues.
“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. “I don’t have any issues with what people want to believe, but there’s no place for it in our libraries.”
A district spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In March, Granbury leaders issued a statement saying the district is “committed to ensuring appropriate materials are available for student choice reading.”
The Hood County district has been embroiled in fights over books for months. Earlier this year, officials removed more than 100 books from library shelves.
Among the books removed for review: Safe Sex 101, an educational book for teenagers; Separate Is Never Equal, the story of a family’s fight against school segregation; Being Jazz, a memoir of a transgender child; and New Kid, a graphic novel about a Black boy’s experiences at school. Several of the books focus on racism or LGBTQ characters.
A committee later decided to return most of the books to the shelves.
The superintendent’s comments and the book removals fostered a hostile environment for LGBTQ children, the ACLU argued.
“By choosing to open this investigation in response to our complaint, the federal government is signaling that remedying discrimination against LGBTQIA+ students is a top priority and that school districts cannot deny students the right to be themselves in school, be it through book bans, discriminatory comments, or other harmful policies,” ACLU attorney Chloe Kempf said in a statement.
The ACLU recently asked federal education officials to open additional probes into other North Texas districts.
The group’s attorneys want the Office of Civil Rights to investigate Keller ISD for its new policy prohibiting books about gender fluidity and Frisco ISD for its policy restricting bathroom usage to facilities that align with a person’s biological sex.
Should the Office of Civil Rights open investigations, it could take months or even years to reach resolutions.
If the office finds a civil rights violation, it would work to negotiate a “voluntary resolution agreement.” Federal officials would then monitor how those steps were implemented over time.
Last year, the U.S. Department of Education opened a civil rights investigation into allegations of discrimination in Southlake schools. No resolution in the case has been made public.
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