Sex

Parents Sue Illinois School District to Obstruct Bathroom Access for Transgender Students

The lawsuit is in response to the Department of Education's landmark November 2015 decision that Palatine-Schaumburg High School District 211 violated anti-discrimination laws when it refused to let a transgender student use the girls' locker room.

The complaint states that the Department of Education exceeded its authority when it issued guidelines in April 2014 stating that “sex” in Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in schools, includes “gender identity.” Shutterstock

A lawsuit filed against Palatine-Schaumburg High School District 211 and the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) alleges that districtwide policies permitting a transgender student to use restroom and locker room facilities that align with her gender identity “trample students’ privacy and other constitutional and statutory rights by forcing 14- to 17-year old girls to use locker rooms and restrooms with biological males.”

In 2013, a transgender girl who goes by the moniker “Student A” filed a complaint with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), alleging that her school district’s refusal to grant her access to the girls’ locker room was discriminatory. The OCR sided with Student A, and it determined that District 211’s practice of requiring Student A to change in a separate area for gym class was discriminatory because it treated Student A differently from other girls.

The OCR also informed District 211 that the district could risk facing a federal lawsuit or losing approximately $6 million in federal funding annually if the district did not change its practice.

District 211 entered into an agreement settling the locker room dispute with Student A. This “Locker Room Agreement,” as it’s referred to in the suit, grants Student A the right to use the girls’ locker room as long as she agrees to use private changing stations inside it. In early December, the District 211 School Board approved the agreement by a vote of 5 to 2.

That agreement, along with a previous decree from the district permitting all students to use school restrooms according to the students’ perceived gender identity (the so-called Restroom Policy), infringes on female students’ right to bodily privacy, according to the members of an unincorporated voluntary association—meaning not a formal organization—called Students and Parents for Privacy.

The lawsuit, which Students and Parents for Privacy filed in federal court on Wednesday, alleges that the Locker Room Agreement and Restroom Policy have caused some female students to “experience embarrassment, humiliation, anxiety, intimidation, fear, apprehension, stress, degradation, and loss of dignity.” It asks a U.S. District Court judge to order District 211 to reverse its policy.

The complaint states that the Department of Education exceeded its authority when it issued guidelines in April 2014 stating that “sex” in Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in schools, includes “gender identity.” Those guidelines explain that “Title IX’s sex discrimination prohibition extends to claims of discrimination based on gender identity or failure to conform to stereotypical notions of masculinity or femininity and OCR accepts such complaints for investigation.”

The lawsuit is in response to the DOE’s landmark November 2015 decision that District 211 violated anti-discrimination laws when it refused to let Student A use the girls’ locker room. That decision, which stemmed from the department’s 2014 guidelines, has already had a profound impact on the legal landscape.

Last month, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Gavin Grimm, a transgender student who wishes to use the boys’ restroom at his Gloucester County, Virginia high school, signaling that the high school’s anti-trans bathroom law is a violation of Title IX. Meanwhile, North Carolina, which just passed the anti-transgender HB 2, not only sits in the Fourth Circuit—and would therefore be subject to any legal principles coming from Grimm’s case—but was also hit with a threat from the U.S. Department of Justice Wednesday that if it implements HB 2, it risks a lawsuit and losing $861 million of its federal funding.

The lawsuit alleges that the DOE misinterpreted Title IX in 2015, and “threatened District 211 with the loss of $6 million of federal funding if it did not give a biologically male student (‘Student A’), who perceives himself [sic] to be female, the right of entry to, and use of, the girls’ locker rooms.” Plaintiffs misgender Student A throughout the complaint.

Plaintiffs say that the agreement is insufficient to protect the privacy of students, partly because, the complaint alleges, there’s no way to monitor whether Student A will change in the private changing room, as the Locker Room Agreement states, or change out in the open with the other girls.

In addition, the plaintiffs allege that the district’s policies violate their right to religious freedom under the Illinois Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The complaint states that some of the students “have a religious requirement that they practice modesty,” and “a sincere religious belief that they must not undress or use the restroom, in the presence of the opposite biological sex, and also that they must not be in the presence of the opposite biological sex while the opposite biological sex is undressing or using the restroom.”

“We do sympathize with children who have difficult personal issues to deal with, to work through,” said Students and Parents for Privacy member Vicki Wilson, according to the Daily Herald.

In a statement, Jeremy Tedesco, an attorney for the plaintiffs with Alliance Defending Freedom, said, “Students have an expectation of privacy in restrooms and locker rooms, and that expectation is violated when a school puts the opposite-sex student in those kinds of private and intimate facilities,” reported the Chicago Tribune.

Plaintiffs plan to seek an injunction to reverse the district’s policy permitting Student A to use the girls’ locker room.

The American Civil Liberties Union also issued a statement, calling the lawsuit “a sad development by groups opposed to fair and humane treatment of all students, including those who are transgender.”

District 211 Superintendent Dan Cates issued a statement saying the district “affirms and supports the identity of all our students,” according to the Daily Herald.

“The district has faithfully honored our agreement with the Office for Civil Rights, and our students have shown acceptance, support, and respect of each other,” the statement continues. “We have implemented the agreement without any reports of incident or issue. Individual changing stalls in our locker rooms are readily available to every student, and further accommodations that provide even greater privacy remain available upon request.”