Maryland Middle School Gives Male Students Ultimatum: Share Locker Room With a Girl or Change Elsewhere

A Maryland school district is forcing middle school boys to choose between sharing their locker room with a girl or changing elsewhere and risking being late for class, according to a Title IX complaint filed Friday.

When male students at West Middle School toured locker room facilities last September in preparation for the school year, the boys noticed something strange: a girl was on the tour.

One concerned boy immediately alerted his parents and met with the school’s principal and school counselor — only to be told that Carroll County Public Schools permits students to use whichever facilities correspond to their gender identity, according to the complaint filed by the Defense of Freedom Institute.

If he was uncomfortable with the presence of a girl in his locker room, the male student could change in an inconveniently located staff bathroom in the main administrative office, school officials told him, according to the complaint.

The boy and his family have requested anonymity for fear of retribution.

“Needless to say, I think the parents didn’t feel that the single-user bathroom that their son was being granted access to as an alternative to the boys’ locker room was sufficient, and it wasn’t an equal facility,” Senior Counsel at DFI Paul Zimmerman told National Review. “So they expressed their objection to that, and simply asked the administrators of West Middle School to grant their son an equal option to a locker room with other boys in order to change for PE class.”

That didn’t happen. Instead, when the boy voiced his concerns to administrators, the school counselor was “dismissive” and “even smiled and laughed at him while he was expressing his objections,” Zimmerman said. When his parents protested via email that “our son should not have to sacrifice access to the same type of locker room that his peers use in order to have his privacy respected,” WMS Principal Shannon Zepp said that she was simply implementing the district’s gender-identity policy.

CCPS did not respond to a request for comment.

Administrators doubled down on the policy in a series of subsequent correspondence and falsely assured the boy that the girl student might not actually use the boy’s locker room during the school year.

Then, on September 16, the boy “encountered the biological girl leaving the boys’ locker room as he entered,” the complaint says. He and six of his classmates did not want to change in front of the girl; so they all went to change in the single-stall bathroom, as instructed previously by administrators. The boy was late for his next class as a result.

The boy’s parents again emailed administrators with their concerns.

“Your primary duty as principal is to protect the safety, dignity, and privacy of all students,” they said in a September 16 email. “Instead, CCPS has chosen to elevate one student’s apparent preferences while disregarding the legal rights of others. Hiding behind a poorly designed policy while children are left to fend for themselves is not leadership.”

“It is a failure of responsibility, plain and simple.”

CCPS Superintendent Cynthia McCabe told the parents that school officials had “attempted to reasonably accommodate your son’s request for privacy and to explain to you the acceptable guidelines,” according to the complaint.

Because so many boys refused to change in front of a girl, the school assigned additional changing spaces in the PE teacher’s office, a staff bathroom in the main office, a bathroom in the nurse’s office, and a bathroom in a media room.

“Unlike the boys’ locker room, these options are not available to students at any time they want and have caused them to be late to class on a consistent basis,” DFI says in its complaint. “In some cases teachers start those classes without the students present; in others, the teachers of those classes have delayed the start of these classes for the boys.”

“The [boy represented by DFI] — who simply wants to get dressed for PE without being in the presence of a girl and not be late for class — has been late to class every time he has used a single-user bathroom instead of the boys’ locker room,” the complaint adds.

CCPS has since launched a Title IX investigation into the family’s concerns with the help of a third-party law firm. DFI “doesn’t have any hope” that the investigation will yield favorable results for the male student, Zimmerman told NR.

Until the situation is resolved the boys have a few options: change in a different location and risk being late for class; stay in their dirty gym clothes all day; or change in front of a girl.

Although Superintendent McCabe has said that the district will add “private stalls” to WMS locker rooms, “she provided no timetable for construction of the stalls,” and failed to justify how four stalls would properly accommodate the now eleven boys who refuse to change in front of a girl, the complaint notes.

“This boy is just trying to go about his school day and complete his studies, and go to PE class,” Zimmerman said. “Instead of being supported by the school in his objections to sharing a locker room with a girl, he’s being intimidated, harassed, and ultimately told that his only option other than sharing a locker room with a girl is to use distant facilities.”

“This is affecting his privacy and dignity and his studies in a way that’s just horrible.”