Family · Ann Arbor, MI Metro · September 18, 2026
DOJ Gives Ann Arbor Schools 14 Days to Fix Parental Rights Violations
The U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division has given Ann Arbor Public Schools 14 days from Sept. 14 to comply with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA), or risk losing federal funding, according to Michigan Capitol Confidential. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon wrote to the district's board and superintendent stating the district's policy on transgender and gender nonconforming students blocks parents from full access to their children's education records, a violation of federal law first flagged in a July 25 DOJ letter. The district said in August it had revised the policy, but the DOJ's September letter quoted Equity Trustee Chair Susan Schmidt telling an August 26 board meeting, "It doesn't mean we're changing anything. We're trying to be more clever than that." AAPS Communications Director Andrew Cluley confirmed receipt of the letter, saying the district is reviewing it with legal counsel while remaining "committed to protecting the privacy, safety, and well-being of every student, while complying with federal law."
Source: Michigan Capitol Confidential
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Why Bible-Believing Christians Should Care
Scripture places the authority and responsibility to raise, teach, and know one's own children squarely on parents, not on school administrators acting as gatekeepers of information about a child's identity. When a district official admits on the record that a policy revision was designed to appear compliant while changing nothing substantively, that is not a paperwork dispute — it is a stated intent to conceal information from parents while claiming transparency. Christian parents should recognize this as a broader pattern: institutions adopting gender-identity frameworks that place a school's judgment about a child's welfare above a parent's God-given authority. This case matters beyond Ann Arbor because it shows how such policies survive federal scrutiny through language, not substance, until enforcement forces the issue.
And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. — Deuteronomy 6:7
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From the book
Legitimate expertise is technical competence exercised under moral authority, like a mathematics teacher explaining algebra. False expertise is ideology wearing the costume of science in order to usurp moral authority, like a counselor telling a child that his parents are unsafe because they hold biblical views on gender.
— Chapter 18, “The Expert Against the Parent”
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