Loudoun County was hit with a Department of Justice lawsuit on Tuesday over its transgender policies, after the district suspended two Christian high school boys who expressed discomfort with the presence of a girl in their locker room.
In March, a female student at Stone Bridge High School recorded a group of boys in the men’s locker room asking why a girl was allowed to use the boys’ locker room. Although recording in locker rooms is against district policy, the district opened a Title IX investigation into the boys, two Christian and one Muslim, and accused the two Christian boys of sexual harassment and sex-based discrimination.
In a video the girl submitted to LCPS, the boys said, “Is there a girl in here?” and “I’m so uncomfortable there’s a girl,” and “That’s a female bro get out of here.” LCPS called their speech “open, loud, and repeated” harassment “in an attempt to intimidate and humiliate” the female student.
The district dropped a sexual harassment charge against the Muslim boy, as “the conduct alleged would not constitute sexual harassment” even if proven, according to the district’s Title IX Office. Josh Hetzler, a lawyer representing all three boys, called the situation a “case of clear religious discrimination against our two Christian clients . . . The same facts were alleged against them all, yet the only difference is their faith.”
LCPS suspended the two boys in August, who said that their speech was inspired by the sincerely held religious belief that boys are boys and girls are girls. The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights and Attorney General Jason Miyares’s separate investigations both found LCPS in violation of Title IX for suspending the boys.
Now, the Department of Justice has filed suit against the Loudoun County School Board “for its denial of equal protection based on religion,” the DOJ said in a press release.
“Students do not shed their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse gate,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. 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.”
Policy 8040, LCPS’s controversial rule that allows individuals to use whichever private facilities correspond to their gender identity not sex, is at the center of the DOJ’s case.
LCPS claims that the high school boys created a hostile environment for the female students. The district passed policy 8040 in 2021, which allows students to play on sports teams “in a manner consistent with the student’s gender identity” and use bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond to their gender identity.