Education secretary says department is investigating Fairfax County schools, according to DOJ report transcript

U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said at a June Justice Department event that her department is investigating Fairfax County Public Schools. Her remarks are recorded in a transcript included in a federal report released this week.

McMahon spoke at a June 11, 2026 roundtable, "Exposing Weaponization Against Parents in Schools." Its transcript is reprinted as an appendix to the Justice Department's 273-page "2026 Report to Expose the Weaponization of Government Against Parents in Schools," dated Oct. 5. The report is mainly about the 2021 memo by former Attorney General Merrick Garland on threats against school officials. McMahon's remarks covered her department's broader enforcement of federal parental-rights laws.

"We are actively investigating school districts, including Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia for reportedly providing secret abortion services to minors," McMahon said, according to the transcript. In the same sentence she named Burlington Public Schools in Massachusetts, which she said was being investigated "for evidently disregarding parents legal right to opt their children out of a survey that ask minors about drug and alcohol use, sexual encounters, and gender identity."

The transcript contains no other details about the Fairfax inquiry: not when it began, which office is handling it, what law is involved, or what stage it has reached. The DOJ report itself does not discuss Fairfax County. McMahon's description of the allegation is hers, and the transcript does not include a response from the school system.

McMahon placed the investigation within a wider effort she described as enforcing the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, and a second law she referred to as PPRA. She described FERPA as "the law that grants parents the right to look at their kids records and to be informed." She said that within weeks of taking office the administration "put state education agencies on notice that they must help uphold parents' rights" under those laws and the Constitution, "and we are aggressively enforcing compliance with these laws."

"For the first time, the department has launched statewide investigations to hold states and school districts accountable for their reported illegal activity," McMahon said. "Never before have parental rights laws been enforced at this scale." She added that the department was "getting all kinds of grief for this."

She cited a finding against the California Department of Education for FERPA violations. In her description, that finding exposed tactics including "creating secret gender support plans" and asking a student-management software company to hide students' name and pronoun changes from parents. She said the department also has open investigations into "Washington's and Maine's education agencies for similar alleged practices."

McMahon also discussed Northern Virginia in another context. She said the department "designated Loudoun and four other Northern Virginia districts as high-risk entities for blatant and ongoing violations of Title IX." She said it placed them "on reimbursement status for all Department funds, over $50 million dollars in total." She did not name the other four districts, and the transcript does not say whether Fairfax County is among them.

Speaking more broadly, McMahon said that under the previous administration, school personnel had been led to "secretly facilitate students so-called gender transitions." She said they then claimed such information did not count as education records that parents could inspect under federal law. "Children do not belong to the government," she said. "They belong to parents."

She also recalled a meeting with young people she called detransitioners, who she said described school staff who "took advantage of their vulnerability."

The roundtable was hosted by the Justice Department's Weaponization Working Group. Participants included then-Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan and former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin. McMahon said she had to leave after her remarks. Before leaving, she praised Youngkin, saying she still wished he "was Governor Youngkin because he did so much in the state of Virginia."

The report's own findings concern the Garland memo. It concludes that the memo resulted from White House pressure and was issued over objections from DOJ and FBI attorneys. Attorney General Pamela Bondi has rescinded the memo.

Fairfax County is a county in Northern Virginia. Its county seat is Fairfax, an independent city.