Statutory Title IX Enforcement Challenges Are Not Automatically Tucker Act Contract Claims

1. Introduction

This decision addresses where school districts may challenge federal Title IX enforcement—not whether their policies concerning transgender students comply with Title IX. Its central distinction is between an action seeking to enforce a federal grant agreement and an action challenging the statutory legality of agency enforcement. Although both can affect federal funding, they do not necessarily belong in the same court.

The Fairfax County School Board and Arlington School Board maintained policies allowing students to use bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity. Their policies also addressed overnight accommodations and restricted the compulsory use of separate, single-occupancy facilities. Following a complaint received in February 2025, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights investigated those policies.

The districts argued that their policies complied with—and were required by—the Fourth Circuit’s interpretation of Title IX in Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board. OCR disagreed. It concluded that the policies violated Title IX and proposed resolution agreements requiring changes to them. When negotiations failed, the Department commenced administrative proceedings seeking suspension or termination of assistance and designated the districts as “high-risk” grant recipients.

The designation imposed a reimbursement condition: before drawing Department funds for an expenditure, a district had to document that the expenditure was allowable and had already been paid using nonfederal funds. The condition would remain until adequate corrective action was taken.

The districts sued the Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, in her official capacity, and the Department under the Administrative Procedure Act. They sought declarations concerning Title IX, removal of the high-risk designations, protection against further enforcement, and funding-related relief. The district court dismissed both complaints on its own initiative, reasoning that the Tucker Act placed the disputes exclusively within the Court of Federal Claims.

The Fourth Circuit rejected that wholesale dismissal. Its holding is deliberately limited: the Tucker Act did not eliminate district-court jurisdiction over every claim merely because the challenged Title IX enforcement affected federal grants.

2. Summary of the Opinion

The majority’s decision

The majority concluded that at least some claims were statutory rather than essentially contractual. Those claims challenged the Department’s determination that the districts violated Title IX and its use of that determination to impose high-risk status and reimbursement conditions. Resolving them would principally require interpreting Title IX and reviewing agency action, not enforcing a promise contained in a grant agreement.

The districts also requested forms of relief that were not inherently contractual: a declaration that their policies complied with Title IX, an order setting aside their high-risk designations, and an injunction against further enforcement based on the alleged violations. Even if particular demands for payment exceeded the district court’s authority, those demands did not justify dismissing everything.

The dissent’s position

Judge Richardson understood the litigation differently. In his view, the districts’ real objective was restoration of their previous grant-payment arrangements. Title IX supplied the disputed funding condition, but the grants supplied the asserted entitlement to payment. Declaratory and injunctive requests were therefore intermediate steps toward contractual relief, not independent statutory claims.

What the court did not decide

• Whether the districts’ policies violate Title IX.
• How Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board applies to those policies.
• Whether the Department acted arbitrarily, unlawfully, or contrary to the Spending Clause.
• Whether each claim satisfies finality, ripeness, or other threshold requirements.
• Whether every requested remedy is available in district court.

The appellate judgment vacated the dismissal—not the Department’s high-risk designations—and did not award an injunction or order payment.

3. The Governing Statutory Framework

Title IX enforcement and review

Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in federally assisted education programs, subject to statutory exceptions. Under 20 U.S.C. § 1682, funding agencies may issue implementing regulations and enforce compliance through termination or suspension of assistance or “by any other means authorized by law.” Agencies must first seek voluntary compliance.

Section 1683 connects that enforcement authority to judicial review. Agency actions taken under § 1682 receive the review otherwise available for similar agency actions taken on other grounds. Section 1683 also provides an APA-review route for certain actions terminating or refusing assistance when review is not otherwise available.

Other education statutes establish more specific routes. Under 20 U.S.C. § 1234g, specified Department actions—including withholding payments, recovering funds, and issuing cease-and-desist orders—are reviewed in the appropriate federal court of appeals. Thus, Title IX enforcement does not operate within a single, universal forum.

The APA

Section 702 of the APA waives sovereign immunity for qualifying actions seeking relief other than money damages. Section 706 authorizes courts to set aside unlawful agency action and compel action unlawfully withheld. These provisions do not make every agency dispute immediately reviewable, nor do they override another statute that expressly or impliedly forbids the requested relief.

The Tucker Act

The Tucker Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1491, gives the Court of Federal Claims jurisdiction over specified claims against the United States, including claims founded on express or implied contracts. Read with 28 U.S.C. § 1346(a)(2), contractual claims exceeding $10,000 ordinarily belong exclusively there unless Congress has authorized another court to hear them.

The jurisdictional inquiry therefore turns on substance: is the plaintiff enforcing a contractual entitlement, or invoking genuinely independent legal limits on agency conduct? Calling a contract claim an APA claim does not change its character. Equally, the presence of a grant does not automatically convert every statutory challenge into a contract dispute.

4. Analysis of the Majority’s Legal Reasoning

A. The source of the asserted right

The majority applied the established inquiry into the source of the asserted rights and the nature of the requested relief. It emphasized that the districts did not identify a grant provision permitting their facilities policies or guaranteeing freedom from the challenged enforcement measures.

Nor did they identify a contractual term guaranteeing advance payment rather than reimbursement. Indeed, 20 U.S.C. § 1226a-1 permits payments in advance or by reimbursement as the Secretary determines. The majority therefore understood the pertinent claim as follows: even if reimbursement is an available payment method, the Department cannot impose it as a penalty for a Title IX violation that, according to the districts, has not occurred.

That formulation makes the alleged legal error statutory. The dispute concerns the legality of the Department’s enforcement premise, not the performance of an identified contractual promise.

B. A contract in the background is not necessarily the foundation of the claim

The majority distinguished a claim that presupposes a contract from one that vindicates contractual rights. The districts’ participation in federal funding programs explains why the Department could act against them. It does not necessarily identify the legal right they seek to enforce through judicial review.

This distinction is important beyond the immediate controversy. Regulated parties frequently have contractual relationships with government agencies. Treating that relationship as dispositive would risk converting statutory challenges to agency authority into contract litigation merely because money or an agreement appears in the factual background.

C. The relief must be separated rather than treated as indivisible

The complaints requested several kinds of relief. Some demands—particularly an order to pay allegedly denied funds—could raise Tucker Act problems. Others sought review of legal determinations, administrative designations, and future enforcement.

The majority refused to let potentially problematic payment requests dictate the treatment of all other claims. Even assuming the district court could not grant particular monetary relief, that conclusion would not establish that the entire litigation belonged in the Court of Federal Claims.

The decision therefore requires a claim-sensitive and remedy-sensitive approach. A court must identify what the plaintiff seeks to vindicate and what each requested order would actually accomplish.

D. The factual funding posture mattered

The parties agreed that no funds had yet been denied, withheld, or terminated. The complaints’ references to constructive funding termination were allegations, not findings that grants had actually ended.

The majority also noted that almost all federal assistance reached the districts through Virginia and was already paid on a reimbursement basis. Fairfax identified only one category of directly received funding paid otherwise; Arlington identified neither directly received federal funding nor funding paid otherwise than by reimbursement.

Those facts weakened a characterization of the entire case as a straightforward effort to restore advance payments. They also supported the majority’s caution that a future suit seeking reimbursement for an actually denied expenditure might present different jurisdictional questions.

E. Congress’s review structure limits broad Tucker Act theories

The majority considered Title IX’s enforcement-and-review framework materially different from ordinary disputes over terminated grants. Congress expressly contemplated judicial review of Title IX enforcement, including review in Article III courts of certain actions affecting assistance.

That framework did not establish that every present claim was reviewable in district court. It did, however, undermine the broader proposition that all challenges arising from the enforcement of a federal funding condition necessarily belong in the Court of Federal Claims.

5. Precedents Cited and Their Influence

A. The principal contract-versus-statute authorities

Megapulse, Inc. v. Lewis, 672 F.2d 959 (D.C. Cir. 1982)

This case supplied the central analytical framework, as incorporated into Fourth Circuit precedent. Courts examine the source of the claimed rights and the relief sought to determine whether an action is essentially contractual. It also establishes the anti-evasion principle: plaintiffs cannot escape Tucker Act restrictions merely by using APA terminology.

Both opinions accepted that substance controls. Their disagreement concerned the substance of these complaints: the majority saw independent statutory review; the dissent saw grant-payment enforcement.

United States v. J & E Salvage Co., 55 F.3d 985 (4th Cir. 1995)

The majority invoked this decision’s instruction to make rational distinctions between genuinely contractual actions and actions resting on independent legal grounds. The dissent also relied on it to support looking beyond pleading labels. Its significance lies in rejecting categorical shortcuts while requiring a realistic account of the right being asserted.

Crowley Government Services, Inc. v. General Services Administration, 38 F.4th 1099 (D.C. Cir. 2022)

This was the majority’s closest analogy. A contractor challenged an agency’s statutory authority to audit its bills. Although a government contract generated the bills, the asserted limit on auditing authority came from statute rather than the contract.

The majority similarly viewed the districts’ challenge as directed to the Department’s statutory enforcement authority. The dissent distinguished the case: in its view, the districts were seeking restoration of payment terms, whereas the contractor challenged an independently unauthorized audit. The dispute over this analogy exposes the central divide between the opinions.

Bowen v. Massachusetts, 487 U.S. 879 (1988)

The majority used this decision to establish that Court of Federal Claims jurisdiction is exclusive only where Congress has not authorized another court to hear the claim. It also supported the proposition that setting aside agency action does not become impermissible merely because payment may follow.

The dissent emphasized a distinction: the statute in that case itself directed payment, while Title IX does not promise advance grant payments. Accordingly, the case supports review of genuinely statutory entitlements, not a general exemption from Tucker Act limits whenever a plaintiff invokes a statute.

Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians v. Patchak, 567 U.S. 209 (2012)

This decision supplied an important limitation on APA review. Section 702’s waiver does not apply where another consent-to-suit statute expressly or impliedly forbids the relief sought. The majority recognized that rule but found it insufficient to eliminate all claims here. The dissent relied on it to argue that limitations on Court of Federal Claims remedies cannot be repaired by proceeding under the APA.

Spectrum Leasing Corp. v. United States, 764 F.2d 891 (D.C. Cir. 1985)

This decision provided the dissent’s strongest conceptual analogy. A contractor’s invocation of the Debt Collection Act did not change the fact that its right to payment originated in a contract. A statute affecting the government’s administration of a contract does not necessarily create an independent substantive right to the requested payment.

The majority also referred to the case, through later precedent, for the proposition that specific performance is a classic contractual remedy. The present dispute therefore turned on whether the districts sought that remedy in substance or instead sought independent review of unlawful enforcement.

B. The recent grant-payment decisions

Department of Education v. California, 145 S. Ct. 966 (2025)

The Supreme Court stayed an order preventing termination of education grants and requiring payment of past-due and accruing obligations. The government was likely to establish that the APA did not authorize an order enforcing contractual payment obligations.

The majority distinguished the present appeal by its scope and posture: the question was not simply whether a particular payment order could issue, but whether every claim had to be dismissed. It also emphasized this precedent’s recognition that a possible resulting disbursement does not alone defeat district-court jurisdiction.

National Institutes of Health v. American Public Health Association, 145 S. Ct. 2658 (2025)

The Supreme Court stayed relief vacating research-grant terminations because the APA did not authorize adjudication of grant-based claims or relief enforcing payment obligations under those grants.

The Fourth Circuit majority treated Justice Barrett’s concurrence as controlling in its distinction between separate agency actions: a challenge to guidance could remain in district court even though a challenge to grant terminations could not. That distinction supplied the majority’s model for avoiding wholesale dismissal.

The dissent accepted that guidance and grant implementation may differ, but argued that these complaints challenged an actual change to grant-payment administration, not merely a generally applicable policy.

Sustainability Institute v. Trump, 165 F.4th 817 (4th Cir. 2026)

There, the Fourth Circuit vacated a permanent injunction setting aside grant freezes or terminations and restoring access to funds. The plaintiffs identified no source of entitlement to continued payment apart from their grant agreements, and reinstatement functioned as specific performance.

The district court in the present litigation had relied on an earlier 2025 injunction ruling in the same litigation. The appellate majority addressed the later published decision and distinguished it because the districts’ complaints included challenges to statutory enforcement rather than only demands to honor terminated grants.

The dissent considered the distinction unpersuasive: statutory and constitutional allegations had not changed the contractual character of the earlier plaintiffs’ payment claims and, in its view, should not do so here.

Solutions in Hometown Connections v. Noem, 165 F.4th 835 (4th Cir. 2026)

This decision affirmed denial of preliminary relief restoring terminated immigration grants because the asserted entitlement was grounded in contractual funding obligations. The majority distinguished it on the same basis as the other grant cases: the present complaints did not exclusively seek reinstatement and payment of terminated awards.

Great-West Life & Annuity Ins. Co. v. Knudson, 534 U.S. 204 (2002)

Quoted through the Supreme Court’s grant-payment analysis, this case supported the characterization of an order enforcing a contractual obligation to pay money. Its role was limited: it helped identify the substance of payment relief, rather than supplying a separate rule governing Title IX enforcement.

C. Title IX enforcement and statutory review precedents

D. Procedural authorities

Rich v. United States, 811 F.3d 140 (4th Cir. 2015), supplied the de novo standard of review: the appellate court independently assessed the jurisdictional dismissal.

Fairfax Cnty. Sch. Bd. v. McMahon, 798 F. Supp. 3d 563 (E.D. Va. 2025), was the decision under review. Its emphasis on the complaints’ repeated references to grants, funds, and reimbursement led it to treat the actions as payment disputes. The Fourth Circuit held that this approach failed to distinguish among claims and requested remedies.

6. The Dissent: A Competing Understanding of the Claims

A. “The reason” versus “the right”

Judge Richardson argued that the majority confused the reason the Department acted with the source of the districts’ asserted entitlement. Title IX explained the Department’s decision to change payment arrangements. The grants, however, allegedly supplied the right to receive payment on the former basis.

He examined three connected features: the asserted right, the alleged injury, and the requested remedy. In his account, each was contractual. The districts claimed an entitlement to their former payment method; the injury was alteration of that method; and the remedy was restoration of it. Declarations concerning Title IX and removal of high-risk status were simply earlier steps toward the same result.

The majority’s contrary understanding did not depend on declaring federal grants noncontractual. It depended on recognizing statutory restrictions on enforcement as potentially independent of the grants’ payment obligations.

B. Spending Clause conditions

The dissent stressed that Title IX operates through conditions voluntarily accepted in exchange for federal assistance. Funding recipients promise compliance; the government provides funds. On that understanding, a disagreement about whether the recipients satisfied the condition is a disagreement about the bargain.

The majority resisted turning that contractual analogy into a universal jurisdictional rule. Congress’s express provisions for judicial review showed that enforcement of funding conditions does not invariably produce a Tucker Act contract action. Analytically, the districts were invoking the APA to challenge the enforcing agency, not bringing a discrimination victim’s private Title IX action.

C. The dissent’s reading of § 1683

Judge Richardson analyzed both statutory review avenues. The first preserves review otherwise available for comparable action; he believed a comparable challenge to grant-payment terms would belong in the Court of Federal Claims. The second applies to termination or refusal of assistance; no assistance had actually been terminated or refused here.

He further reasoned that review in the Court of Federal Claims qualifies as judicial review even though that court is not an Article III tribunal. Thus, on his reading, § 1683 did not open a separate district-court route.

Importantly, the dissent acknowledged that a sufficiently specific statutory review directive can displace the Tucker Act’s ordinary allocation. The disagreement was whether such a route covered the present claims.

D. Additional authorities supporting the dissent

E. The unresolved practical difficulty

The dissent criticized the majority for not identifying precisely which counts survive. That criticism highlights the limited nature of the appellate ruling. The majority identified categories of potentially noncontractual claims but did not resolve their finality, timing, or ultimate availability. The district court must perform that more granular analysis on remand.

7. Impact and Significance

A. A limit on automatic Tucker Act channeling

The decision rejects the inference that federal funding plus a request for relief affecting that funding necessarily equals an exclusively contractual dispute. Courts must consider whether an agency has allegedly exceeded statutory authority independently of any duty to pay under an agreement.

The holding may therefore matter in other federal-assistance programs. Its application will depend on the source of the asserted right, the actual remedy sought, and the program’s review provisions—not simply on whether the plaintiff receives government money.

B. Continued force of the grant-payment cases

The opinion does not displace recent decisions restricting district-court orders that reinstate grants or compel contractual payments. A plaintiff whose sole entitlement comes from a grant agreement cannot obtain a different forum merely by alleging statutory error.

The boundary remains substantive: is the action directed at unlawful regulatory or enforcement conduct, or does it effectively demand contractual performance? The sharply divided opinions show that this classification will remain contested.

C. More precise pleading and adjudication

Future litigants have reason to distinguish challenges to legal findings and enforcement designations from demands for payment. Courts, in turn, should avoid allowing one potentially unavailable remedy to determine the treatment of an entire complaint.

That does not reward artful drafting. The majority retained the requirement to examine the real source of the right and the practical character of the relief. Separating claims clarifies the inquiry; it does not predetermine the answer.

D. No substantive resolution of transgender-student policy

The opinion neither approves nor invalidates the districts’ facilities policies. It does not overrule, reaffirm on the merits, or define the reach of Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board. Its precedential contribution concerns judicial review and forum allocation.

E. Finality and timing may still control

The administrative proceedings remained ongoing, reconsideration requests were pending when suit was filed, and no funds had actually been denied. Those circumstances may matter to finality, ripeness, and other threshold objections. The decision ensures further consideration of the complaints; it does not guarantee that any particular claim will proceed to a merits judgment.

F. The statutory review route remains essential

The opinion also cautions against treating every funding controversy alike. Specified final enforcement actions may proceed directly to a court of appeals under § 1234g; other actions may implicate § 1683 and the APA; genuinely contractual payment claims may belong in the Court of Federal Claims. Identifying the challenged action and its governing review statute must come before choosing the forum.

8. Complex Concepts Simplified

Sovereign immunity

The federal government generally cannot be sued unless Congress has consented. A plaintiff must fit within an applicable waiver and its limits.

Subject matter jurisdiction

A court’s legal authority to hear a category of dispute. A court can lack that authority even when the plaintiff alleges serious government misconduct.

A claim “founded upon” contract

A claim whose asserted entitlement depends on a contractual promise. A contract’s presence in the background does not necessarily make every related claim contractual.

Specific performance

An order requiring a party to perform its contractual promise. An order reinstating and paying a grant can function this way even when framed as an injunction.

Money damages versus other relief

Damages compensate for a loss. Setting aside unlawful agency action is different, even if payment follows. Nevertheless, the APA cannot be used to bypass statutory restrictions on contractual payment relief.

Final agency action

Agency action sufficiently definitive and consequential for APA review. An investigation or administrative charge may be too preliminary.

Ripeness

Whether a dispute is sufficiently developed for judicial decision rather than dependent on uncertain future events.

Spending Clause legislation

Federal legislation attaching conditions to funding. The contract analogy explains recipients’ acceptance of conditions, but this opinion rejects treating that analogy as automatically deciding the proper court.

Vacated and remanded

The appellate court set aside the dismissal and returned the cases for further proceedings. It did not itself invalidate the challenged agency measures.

9. Conclusion

The Fourth Circuit established a narrow but important rule: Title IX enforcement challenges do not become exclusively Tucker Act contract claims merely because they concern federal funding. Courts must distinguish independent statutory challenges from demands to enforce grant-payment obligations and assess claims and remedies separately.

The districts won an opportunity for further judicial consideration, not a ruling on Title IX compliance or funding entitlement. The decision’s broader significance lies in preserving that distinction while leaving ordinary Tucker Act restrictions—and other threshold barriers to APA review—intact.