Riley Williams paid her dues, sat for her campaign headshot, and was ready to run for homecoming queen at Charles R. Drew High School — until Clayton County Public Schools told her no. Williams, a transgender senior, says she was instead offered a spot in the homecoming king race, a swap she says would erase who she actually is.
According to Atlanta News First, Williams paid the required dues and took the headshot before school officials later told her she would not be allowed to run for homecoming queen. The district told the station its policy assigns gender-specific homecoming court positions according to the gender listed in a student's official educational records, and that it is enforcing Title IX in a way that recognizes what it called gender-based distinctions based on biological sex. Clayton County Public Schools also said ignoring the federal guidelines it cites could put the district at risk of potentially losing federal funding.
“Forcing me to run for something like homecoming king would invalidate my experience as a woman,” Williams said, according to Atlanta News First. She told the outlet she hopes the district will find a middle ground, such as creating a gender-diverse homecoming court, rather than sticking strictly to a binary system. The district also said it believes this is the first time a transgender student has sought to run for homecoming court there, per the same account.
A Petition Gains Steam — With Some Confusion Over the Count
Williams responded by launching a Change.org petition titled “Repeal discriminatory gender role policy in Georgia schools,” as The Nerd Stash reported. The petition calls for repealing the gender-role policy and asks state education officials and local school boards to let students take part in homecoming court based on their gender identity rather than the gender on file in school records.
The signature count tells two different stories depending on when you check it. The Nerd Stash reported 733 signatures as of its Sept. 26 publication, while WSB-TV put the total at 1,055 verified signatures as of Tuesday. The discrepancy between the two counts is not explained in either report, but the petition remains open for signatures.
Williams has said school should be a place of acceptance where every student can express themselves freely and authentically, and she has pointed to what she describes as discrimination against transgender students in educational settings more broadly. Clayton County Public Schools, for its part, says it is committed to making students feel welcome and respected and that it respects students' right to express their individual identities — even as it maintains that homecoming court participation must follow traditional birth gender under its current reading of federal law.
The Policy Shift Behind the Standoff
The dispute lands just as the federal ground under Title IX has shifted again. The U.S. Department of Education formally rescinded the Biden administration's 2024 Title IX regulations, which had interpreted sex-discrimination protections to cover sexual orientation and gender identity, according to Education Week. In its place, the department reinstated the 2020 regulations from President Donald Trump's first administration, effective as of Monday — rules the outlet notes lack the explicit anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ students that the 2024 version contained.
The department has characterized these as the same rules it has been enforcing since January 31, 2025, and has separately argued that Title IX requires schools to exclude transgender athletes from girls' teams, per Education Week's reporting. That federal posture is a reversal from the 2024 rule, which the Federal Register describes as an effort to clarify schools' obligations to provide an educational environment free from sex discrimination. The Congressional Research Service has noted that, absent an exception, those 2024 regulations provided that school policies violate Title IX when they prevent students from participating in education programs consistent with their gender identity.
Not Every District Has Drawn the Same Line
Clayton County's approach is not the only way this question has played out this year. At Fairview High School, upperclassmen voted a transgender girl named Sammi as homecoming queen, according to WYTV/YourErie. Dozens of supporters packed a subsequent school board meeting, filling it to standing room only, and the outlet reported that no one spoke out against Sammi being crowned. The Fairview superintendent said homecoming court selection there is student-led and that the district promotes inclusion.
Legal challenges to school gender-identity policies have also struggled to gain traction at the highest level. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a Massachusetts parents' challenge to school officials supporting students' gender identities without notifying parents, Reuters reported. A federal judge had dismissed that case in 2022, and the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal in 2025; the high court had also turned away similar challenges out of Wisconsin and Maryland in 2024, according to the same Reuters account.
For now, Williams's petition remains open, and Clayton County Public Schools has not indicated any plan to change course on how it assigns homecoming court positions. Whether the shifting federal rules around Title IX ultimately move the district's policy, or Williams's push for a gender-diverse court gains ground, remains to be seen.
