A federal whistleblower alleges that senior Biden-era Department of Education officials deliberately violated a court injunction barring them from enforcing Title IX as though it covers gender identity — and nearly a year after the Trump administration revived the investigation, there has been no public accounting of who did what or whether anyone will face consequences.
The allegations center on the department's Office for Civil Rights, where an attorney named Timothy Mattson says he watched his superiors ignore a July 2022 injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Charles Atchley. That order, secured by several GOP-led states including West Virginia, blocked the Biden administration from enforcing guidance documents that reinterpreted Title IX's prohibition on sex discrimination to encompass gender identity, Just the News reported. The Department of Justice filed a notice of compliance with the court.
According to Mattson, OCR continued to do so.
Mattson, who led OCR's Kansas City office, brought his allegations to the Office for Special Counsel through the nonprofit Empower Oversight in spring 2024. The picture he paints is not one of bureaucratic drift or honest misunderstanding. It is a portrait of calculated defiance.
According to Empower Oversight's letter to OSC, Catherine Lhamon — who ran OCR under both Obama and Biden — told Mattson not to put disagreements in writing and "subtly threatened a personnel action" against him. The letter alleges Lhamon:
Read that list again. These are not the actions of someone who misread a ruling. They are the actions of someone who read it clearly and decided it didn't apply to her.
Tristan Leavitt, president of Empower Oversight and a former investigator for Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, pointed to OCR's investigation of Owasso Public Schools as a prime example of how political pressure drove the office to violate the injunction.
After the death by suicide of a student at the school, the Human Rights Campaign asked then-Secretary Miguel Cardona to investigate. That same day, Cardona tweeted:
We all have a role to play" in ensuring transgender and nonbinary students "feel safe in schools.
A deputy assistant secretary then asked Mattson's office to investigate based on the HRC letter. Mattson's enforcement director changed the subject of the probe from "sex stereotypes" to "gender identity" — a category the court had explicitly barred OCR from enforcing under its reinterpretation of Title IX. When Mattson refused to investigate gender identity discrimination as part of the case, Lhamon transferred it to the Chicago office.
Leavitt described this dynamic to Just the News, No Noise:
Really kind of coerces them into saying, well, we'll do whatever we need to do to get out from under your scrutiny here.
The feds didn't need to win in court. They just needed to open investigations and bully school districts into compliance. Leavitt estimated there were "potentially dozens of cases" handled this way.
On December 12, 2024, the Biden Department of Education responded through OSC by exonerating its own staff. Empower Oversight filed objections on January 21, 2025, calling the department's reading of the injunction "nonsensical" and "pure sophistry."
The government's argument was that the injunction only prohibited direct citations to the "challenged documents" — not enforcement of the legal theory those documents contained. Empower Oversight called this a "bait-and-switch," noting:
OCR has repeatedly opened investigations—and resolved investigations—based on the interpretation of Title IX set forth in the challenged documents.
Regarding the Owasso case specifically, Empower Oversight said OCR's claim that its resolution letter did not rely on gender identity theory was "directly contradicted by the letter itself."
Judge Atchley's injunction was not ambiguous. He repeatedly stated in his ruling that the "content" of the guidance unlawfully advanced "new interpretations" of Title IX and imposed "new legal obligations." The Biden administration's compliance theory — that you can stop citing a document while continuing to enforce everything it says — is the legal equivalent of removing a price tag and insisting the item is free.
OSC gave the Department of Education until March 12, 2025, to respond to Empower Oversight's objections. According to Empower Oversight's one-page summary, the follow-up report "should be completed soon." But nearly a year after the Trump administration resurrected the investigation, there is no public update. Corey Williams, OSC's interim communications director, told Just the News on Friday that the office could not comment on any potential action.
Leavitt made clear what he believes the stakes are:
At the very least, there should be consequences for any employees who are still with the Department of Education" who intentionally ignored the July 2022 injunction.
He noted there is "reason to believe that some of them still may be" at the department. Mattson himself remains with OCR. Lhamon left when the Trump administration began and is now the inaugural executive director of the Edley Center on Law and Democracy at UC Berkeley's law school.
Asked about Mattson's allegations, Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky told The College Fix last fall that they were "unsubstantiated" and that "they do not change our confidence" in Lhamon, who he said is "widely recognized for her integrity and commitment to civil rights." He did not respond to follow-up requests from Just the News.
Leavitt noted that those who violated the injunction "definitely could be held in contempt" — though prosecuting them "is a more complicated legal issue." Empower Oversight's summary put it plainly:
"Court orders are not suggestions to be ignored when bureaucrats disagree with them."
This is the part that should command attention. When a federal judge issued a contempt finding against the Trump administration over deportation flights, an appeals court ultimately threw it out, ruling the judge lacked authority. But the media treated that episode as a constitutional crisis in real time. Here, whistleblower allegations describe senior federal officials allegedly conspiring to defy a court order, coaching subordinates to avoid paper trails, and threatening personnel actions against the attorney who objected — and the story has generated almost no sustained coverage.
The asymmetry is revealing. When the left believes a court order has been violated, it is a threat to the rule of law. When a whistleblower alleges the left itself violated a court order, it is an "unsubstantiated" claim from someone whose boss has "integrity."
Leavitt framed the stakes in terms that go beyond this single case:
It's very difficult to prevent something like this from happening in the future if there aren't consequences for this kind of bad action in the past.
He's right. The administrative state's power rests on the assumption that federal employees operate within legal boundaries. If officials can defy a court injunction, dodge a paper trail, threaten whistleblowers, and then land a prestigious post at Berkeley — the incentive structure is clear. The law is for the people who follow it. The bureaucracy operates on different terms.
The Trump administration has the investigation. It has the whistleblower. It has Empower Oversight's detailed objections and a March 2025 deadline that has presumably come and gone. What it hasn't produced is a result. Mattson put his career on the line. The least the system owes him — and the public — is an answer.
