Denver Public Schools officials said the district already complies with federal guidelines bolstering transgender students’ civil rights that were sent out Friday by the U.S. Department of Education and Justice.

The district noted areas in the guidelines that aligned with gender-identity policies that have been in place since 2011, said DPS spokeswoman Nancy Mitchell.

Pronoun use: “Students have an unequivocal right to be addressed using their preferred pronouns,” according to DPS. “Referring to a student who formerly identified as male but now identifies as female as anything but ‘she’ or ‘her’ is inappropriate and likely unlawful.”

Restrooms and locker rooms: “Students are permitted to use the restroom/locker room of the gender with which they identify, regardless of gender assigned at birth or their physical makeup,” the release said. “You may offer a private, unisex restroom, but you may not force the student to use any restroom other than the one affiliated with his/her gender identity.”

Dress code: “You may continue to enforce the dress code, but students are permitted to dress according to the gender with which they identify.”

Privacy: “Students have a right to be protected from the unnecessary disclosure of their private information.”

Jefferson County Public Schools released a statement that its restroom policy has matched federal guidelines since 2013, adding “because we’ve already been following a policy that meets the guidelines, we aren’t doing any interviews.”

Some state politicians voiced outrage and said Colorado should ignore the guidelines.

“This is absurd,” said Colorado Senate Assistant Majority Leader Kevin Lundberg, R-Berthoud in a Senate Republicans news release. “The U.S. Department of Education must not have much to do if they are now spending time on public school bathroom policies in Denver, Danville and Duluth. Plain and simple, this is none of their business and totally beyond Congressional intent in the enactment of Title IX. Therefore, it is a policy Colorado should ignore.”

Sen. Kevin Granthan, R-Canon City, agreed. “Does the President honestly think he can use executive authority to substitute his opinion over those of local school districts and moms and dads?”

The letter sent by the U.S. Department of Education and Justice states that as a condition of receiving federal funds, schools must be in compliance with Title IX — a policy where schools agree not to “exclude, separate, deny benefits to, or otherwise treat differently on the basis of sex.” The treatment of transgender students, the letter says, falls under Title IX regulations.

“This means that a school must not treat a transgender student differently from the way it treats other students of the same gender identity,” the letter says, clarifying that gender identity is a person’s internal sense of gender that does not, necessarily, match with the individual’s sex assigned at birth.

The departments also released a collection of best-practice examples, which highlighted schools that have been successful in supporting transgender students. The Daily Camera reports that one of the districts on that list, the Boulder Valley School District, was highlighted for the way it handles complaints about transgender students’ treatment and its policies for overnight accommodations for transgender students.

Here’s a summary of the letter’s guidelines:

• When a student or student’s parent or guardian tells school administration the student is going to express a gender identity different than previously expressed, the school will begin treating the student consistent with the new gender identity. No medical diagnosis or treatment is required as proof.

• Even when other students, parents or community members raise objections or concerns about a transgender student, equal access to education programs and activities will be given to the transgender student, citing: “As is consistently recognized in civil rights cases, the desire to accommodate others’ discomfort cannot justify a policy that singles out and disadvantages a particular class of students.”

• Schools can’t discipline students or exclude them from activities such as yearbook photos, school dances or graduation ceremonies for appearing or behaving in a fashion consistent with their gender identity.