Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memo this week that suggests barring transgender people from using bathrooms and facilities that align with their gender identity across thousands of federally funded universities, local governments and employers nationwide.
In the Trump administration’s latest effort to target diversity, equity and inclusion, the Justice Department’s guidance takes aim at race- and gender-based programs and policies that were created to ensure that historically marginalized communities can access equal opportunities.
In particular, Bondi wrote that federally funded institutions that “allow males, including those self-identifying as ‘women,’ to access single-sex spaces designed for females — such as bathrooms, showers, locker rooms, or dormitories — undermine the privacy, safety, and equal opportunity of women and girls.”
She advises that institutions “should affirm sex-based boundaries rooted in biological differences,” a nod to the Trump administration’s day one executive order declaring that the government only recognizes sex as immutable and binary.
The attorney general’s office did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
Since President Donald Trump returned to office in January, he has issued a slew of executive orders and policy recommendations targeting access to health care, participation in sports, and trans people’s ability to use bathrooms, locker rooms and sex-segregated facilities that align with their gender identity.
Trump has claimed that his administration and the Republican Party’s efforts to roll back protections for transgender people — and in particular transgender women — in sex-segregated facilities or athletics protect women’s safety. Last year, Republican Rep. Nancy Mace (S.C.) introduced a resolution to bar House members and congressional staffers from using bathrooms other than “those corresponding to their biological sex” to target transgender House Democrat Sarah McBride (Del.).
The Williams Institute, a UCLA think tank focused on LGBTQ+ law and policy, found zero evidence to suggest that transgender people’s presence in bathrooms posed any threat to privacy or safety, according to a 2025 report. By contrast, transgender individuals are significantly more likely to be harassed and denied access to restrooms than their cisgender peers and as a result often avoid using restrooms altogether.
Bondi also advises against DEI programs that assist women business owners. The memo discourages prioritizing “women-owned businesses,” or acknowledging race or sex as a primary factor for contract selection.
The Justice Department provides numerous other examples of programs the administration considers “unlawful discrimination.” These include race-based scholarships or diversity statements on applications. The department discouraged focusing on applicants’ socioeconomic status, first-generation status or geographic diversity if those criteria were chosen to increase participation from certain racial or sex-based groups.
The memo likely will face legal challenges in the months ahead but could have sweeping effects on the kinds of programs, curricula and more at universities, K-12 schools and other institutions.
Current federal law already prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity and religion. In particular, Title VII and Title IX, landmark civil rights laws, bar discrimination on the basis of sex in employment and educational programs.
During the Biden administration, the Department of Education issued a final rule that expanded Title IX protections to include not only sex but sexual orientation and gender identity in an effort to protect LGBTQ+ students. But in the weeks before Trump returned to office, a federal judge in Kentucky blocked Biden’s Title IX guidance, dealing a blow to LGBTQ+ and civil rights advocates.
“There is really nothing one can say about the Department of Justice memo except that it baldly ― but unsurprisingly ― misstates the law, and represents yet another action by the Trump administration inviting people to discriminate,” Camilla B. Taylor, the interim chief legal officer at Lambda Legal, a leading LGBTQ+ legal advocacy group, told HuffPost.
The language of this week’s memo appears to align with an executive order Trump signed in April to encourage “meritocracy and a colorblind society, not race- or sex-based favoritism,” which he wrote is part of a larger goal of “sustaining the American Dream.” This is part of a larger policy agenda to target what Trump has called the “definite anti-white feeling” on the campaign trail last year, as these policy suggestions would undoubtedly favor white Americans.
The memo cautioned that failure to adhere to the guidance could result in “significant legal risks” for institutions. Thus far, this has already manifested in the Trump administration threatening to withhold federal funding from more than 50 universities it says are violating federal civil rights laws.
The Trump administration this week froze $108 million in research funding to Duke University on the grounds of racial discrimination in the form of affirmative action. Similarly, Brown University announced an agreement with the Trump administration to halt gender-affirming care for minors, and adopt definitions of “male” and “female” from Trump’s executive order so as to restore federal funding.