By Brad Brooks
Dec 8 (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Justice said on Monday it had sued a Virginia county’s school board for allowing a biologically female student access to the boy’s locker room and then punishing the boys for complaining.
It was the latest action by the department over the gender policies of some schools across the country.
The department said in a release that it had sued the Loudoun County School Board “for its denial of equal protection based on religion.”
The lawsuit alleges that the school board’s gender policy permitting transgender children to use whichever locker room corresponds with their gender identity “requires students and faculty to accept and promote gender ideology” with which they may not agree.
Loudoun County Public Schools, located on the northwestern outskirts of Washington, DC, said in an email that it could not comment on any matter involving pending litigation.
“Students do not shed their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse gate,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said. “Loudoun County’s decision to advance and promote gender ideology tramples on the rights of religious students who cannot embrace ideas that deny biological reality.”
The Trump administration has taken legal action against several schools and universities across the U.S. over their gender policies.
In a series of executive orders, Trump has banned transgender people from serving in the military, barred transgender girls and women from competing in female sports and ordered an end to federal funding for school programs that include “gender ideology.”
The lawsuit against the Loudoun County School Board comes after the board voted in August to maintain its gender policy allowing transgender children to use whichever bathroom they choose, despite an order from the Department of Education in July that it change the policy or face punishment.
At that time, the board said in a statement that the order from the federal government to change its policy would force it to not comply with federal court precedent that transgender students be allowed to use the bathroom of the gender they identify with.
In September, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights found that Loudoun County schools were discriminating against male students on the basis of sex.
The office said that the school had failed to investigate complaints of sexual harassment made by two male students “concerning the presence of a member of the opposite sex in male-only intimate spaces yet thoroughly investigated the female student’s sexual harassment complaint about the boys.”
The gender policy of Loudoun County Public Schools came in the cross-hairs of the Trump administration after Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, in May asked the state Attorney General Jason Miyares, also a Republican, to investigate claims that the school board had punished students and parents who had spoken out against its gender policy.
Miyares said in a June statement that his office had found that Loudoun County Public Schools had engaged in retaliation against students “for expressing their discomfort for being forced to share a locker room with a member of the opposite sex.”
(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Colorado; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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