Loudoun County Public Schools has suspended two boys who expressed discomfort with the presence of a female student in their locker room at Stone Bridge High School.
LCPS opened a Title IX investigation into the boys after a female student filmed the boys in the men’s locker room saying that they were uncomfortable with a girl using their facilities. The transgender-identifying female student is allowed to use the men’s locker room in accordance with the district’s controversial 8040 policy, which allows students to use facilities that correspond to their gender identity.
LCPS’s Title IX Office determined last week that the two boys committed sexual harassment and sex-based discrimination. They each received a ten-day suspension and are not allowed to have contact with the transgender-identifying female student.
The girl who recorded the boys received an in-school suspension for violating an LCPS policy that prohibits students from recording in locker rooms.
“I can’t imagine how uncomfortable it would be to have a member of the opposite sex in the locker room where people were obviously changing clothes, and then later, on top of that, recording it,” Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares said. “Even though they’re the victims in this, somehow, they’re being treated as perpetrators. I think this is an example, yet again, a school district that tries to be so open-minded their brain falls out.”
Josh Hetzler, the attorney who represents the boys, said that the boys must also draft a corrective action plan with school administrators. Parents told 7News’s Nick Minock, who first broke the locker-room story, that the investigation, which will likely appear on the boys’ permanent records, was unlawful.
“What we have found is one, the boys indeed are the victims in this situation,” Miyares said in early June, after Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin directed him to investigate LCPS. “There is no evidence, no corroborating evidence that we have found that they had sexually harassed anyone, that they had done anything even approaching what would be considered sex discrimination. The reality is, is that Loudoun County Schools, what we have found, have bad policy and bad judgment.”
Misgendering is not sexual harassment under Title IX, Miyares added.
Stone Bridge has been the site of a heated debate over LCPS’s so-called inclusive gender policies before. In 2021, a skirt-wearing boy assaulted a female student in the women’s locker room at Stone Bridge. The event spurred somewhat of a parental uprising in Virginia, securing then-gubernatorial candidate and parental rights advocate Glenn Youngkin’s win.
LCPS’s decision comes as the district fights against the Trump administration’s demands that Virginia public school districts reverse transgender locker room policies.
The Department of Education determined in July that LCPS, Fairfax County Public Schools, Prince William County Public Schools, Alexandria City Public Schools, and Arlington Public Schools, all have bathroom and locker room policies that violate Title IX. On Friday, all five school districts announced that they would keep their policies in place.
“The Virginia divisions will have to defend their embrace of radical gender ideology over ensuring the safety of their students,” the Department of Education told 7News.