By Kristen Consillio, KITV News
Published: Jan. 16, 2026
HONOLULU (Island News) -- A federal investigation into the state Department of Education's policies allowing transgender athletes to compete in school sports is riling activists in Hawaii.
The U.S. Department of Education is investigating 18 educational institutions in 10 states, including Hawaii, after complaints of violating federal law.
Hawaii's public schools currently allow transgender athletes to compete on sports teams that do not match their birth gender.
But a federal investigation said those policies could violate Title 9 and threaten federal funding for our schools.
"It's that the existence of transgender students on sports teams that's discriminating kind of across the board, which is an extremely harmful thing to be telling children," said Emily Hills, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Hawaii.
The U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights said there's been complaints of schools violating the civil rights law banning gender discrimination in federally-funded programs.
It's alleging the state DOE is jeopardizing the safety and equal opportunity of girls by letting students participate in sports based on their "gender identity" and not their biological sex.
"This federal investigation from the US Department of Education isn't an attack on anyone, any community," said Rep. Diamond Garcia, who represents Ewa. "It's simply the enforcement of federal law."
But there is a precedent for the concerns of losing federal money. Last year, the feds restricted funding to five Virginia school districts over transgender policies.
The U.S. Supreme Court is also currently hearing cases challenging state bans on transgender athletes.
"I do know it's not a huge problem like where this issue is occurring at every single sports event or in every single school," Garcia said. "It's few and far between."
Still, activists said this will have consequences beyond funding.
"We already know that transgender gender-diverse youth are at heightened risk for suicide, for suicidal ideation and for a variety of even physical health ailments that are kind of related to being subjected to discrimination," Hills said.
In Hawaii with a long cultural history of embracing gender diversity, activists said it's federal overreach to tell states how to handle these issues, especially for Native Hawaiians.