Education Department investigates Minnesota for violating parental rights with transgender dolls in schools

The U.S. Department of Education (ED) launched an investigation into the Minnesota Department of Education Wednesday to determine whether the state’s new transgender dolls, possibly coming to schools this fall, violate parental rights enshrined in the Constitution.

“No child should be exposed to vulgar material, and certainly not without parental knowledge or consent,” the ED said in a post on X, announcing its investigation.

Minnesota is reportedly using taxpayer dollars to manufacture and distribute “MyGender Dolls” – gender-neutral-named dolls with “removable internal and external genitals” and “more than 100 interchangeable pieces of clothing, accessories and hairstyles – like a trans Mr./Mrs. Potato Head,” according to the New York Post.

These dolls will be available to educators and clinicians to use with children as young as 4, according to the MyGender Dolls website.

But the state of Minnesota has reportedly left parents in the dark, including about whether opt outs are possible, according to a complaint sent Monday to the ED’s Student Privacy Policy Office (SPPO).

“While Governor Walz and the radical left continue to funnel taxpayer dollars to perverted ideologies that can harm children, the Trump Administration is fighting to protect children’s innocence and defend parents’ role as the first and primary decision-makers in their child’s education,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement. “No four-year-old should be exposed to such material – especially without a parent’s knowledge or consent. ED will enforce the law to its fullest extent, putting parents and families firmly in the driver’s seat of their child’s education.”

Defending Education fights for Minnesotan parents

Defending Education (DE) sent the complaint Monday on behalf of Minnesota parents, who are concerned with the intersex dolls. DE is a national grassroots organization whose mission is “depoliticizing education” through research, legal and advocacy work for both K-12 and higher education, Director of Higher Education Initiatives Reagan Dugan told Heartlander News in an interview.

Dugan explained that the complaint alerts the ED to the likely procedural violations of Minnesota regarding these dolls – namely the state’s neglect to inform parents and allow them to remove their children from playing with gender dolls at school.

“Beyond the fact that philosophically it seems that this is somewhat insane, giving four-to 10-year-olds gender dolls where they can remove and add genitalia, which is disgusting and outrageous, the legal side is the reason we put a complaint in, as it seems like it is breaking the procedural aspect,” Dugan said.

Minnesota likely violating law, Constitution

The complaint cites the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA), which prohibits federally funded education institutions from requiring students to provide information regarding their “sex, behavior, or attitudes” or any “mental or psychological problems.” Furthermore, PPRA protects parents’ right to review and opt their children out of any material relating to these matters, according to DE’s complaint.

“Thus, to the extent Minnesota authorities use MyGender Dolls to evaluate students’ perceptions of ‘what [their] body parts are’ and ‘how [they] think and feel about’ their gender, without informing parents or allowing parents to ‘opt out of’ the activity, the program arguably violates the PPRA,” the complaint states.

Violation of PPRA can end in termination of federal funding, according to the ED’s press release.

Additionally, Minnesota’s transgender dolls likely violate the First and 14^th Amendments, which protect “parents’ rights to direct the upbringing and education of their children,” as the U.S. Supreme Court determined in two recent cases.

“When schools use materials that ‘present as a settled matter a hotly contested view of sex and gender that sharply conflicts with the’ views ‘that the parents wish to instill in their children,’ they burden those constitutionally protected parental rights,” the complaint argues.

Higher education infiltration to lower schools

MyGender Dolls are an initiative of the University of Minnesota, with the goal of using “the dolls to get the kids talking about their private parts” and to question “not just what our bodies are able to do now but what we want our bodies to do and look like in the future,” one university professor said, as quoted in the complaint.

MyGender Dolls co-founder said the dolls’ purpose is to teach kids “that there’s diversity in gender identity and that what makes you real is not what your body parts are, but how you think and feel,” according to the complaint.

Dugan said this ideological interplay of higher ed and primary and secondary education is common.

“One of the reasons we moved into higher ed is a lot of the particularly odious, problematic things trickling into K-12 are germinating in these higher ed institutions,” he said, citing “ethnic studies” as a popular higher ed program that has shaped elementary curriculum.

The dolls go back several years at the university, but the release of these gender toys made the abstract research a tangible item that could harm kids, Dugan explained.

“Instead of grad students digging into these questions, it’s now focusing on elementary students and has a real effect on them,” he said. “It’s something where, once we got word that, ‘hey, this is going to be actively involved in these schools potentially this fall,’ that’s a line that’s crossed.”

The Department of Justice said it stands with the ED and “will act swiftly” “if the law has been violated,” according to a post on X.

President of DE Nicole Neily thanked the ED for immediately launching the investigation to protect Minnesota students in a statement provided to Heartlander News.

“It is deeply perverse – and biologically false – to impress upon children that genitalia can be swapped out like Mr. Potato Head parts, with no lasting damage,” she said. “And for the state to wrest control of these conversations from parents (while using their tax dollars to do so, no less) is truly insult to injury.”