An attorney who worked for the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights says he can feel a bit more secure in the state of transgender students’ rights, in addition to the state of his own career, now that a whistleblower complaint he filed against the DOE has settled. 

The complaint accused the DOE of retaliating against former Philadelphia-based OCR general attorney Dwayne Bensing after he drew attention to the OCR’s mishandling of a challenge to Connecticut’s policy of allowing transgender students to participate in sports in accordance to their gender identities. Bensing worked in the department while it was helmed by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. At the time, he said, “the federal government had taken a dark turn with regards to trans students.”