Feds Seek To Join Transgender Locker Room Lawsuit Against Loudoun Schools

ASHBURN, VA — After Loudoun County Public Schools revealed more about the investigation into a Title IX locker room incident involving a transgender student, the Trump administration's Justice Department seeks to join the lawsuit against the school system.

On Monday, the Justice Department announced a motion to join the lawsuit against the Loudoun County School Board. The federal government claims the school system violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment with two Christian male students disciplined after the locker room incident with a transgender student at Stone Bridge High School.

The two male students who faced suspensions in the locker room investigation and their families had pursued a lawsuit against the Loudoun school system and are represented by conservative legal groups America First Legal and the Founding Freedoms Law Center. The lawsuit claimed LCPS violated Title IX for the students' suspensions after they shared a complaint about the transgender student in the boys locker room.

The feds' intervention in the lawsuit targets the school system's Policy 8040, which allows students to use bathrooms and locker rooms based on their gender identity. According to the feds, applying policy 8040 to all students regardless of religious beliefs violates the rights of the two male students "whose religious beliefs require them to use biologically accurate pronouns and use sex-segregated facilities."

"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," said Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

A federal judge had granted a preliminary injunction to pause the suspensions during the case but ordered the parents seeking the lawsuit to pay a $125,000 bond, WJLA reported. One of the students was allowed to attend school while the court case proceeds, while the other moved away from Loudoun County.

More details about the district's Title IX investigation had been revealed in the school system's filing in the court case over the male students' suspensions, Loudoun Now reported. The investigation, supported by testimony from 24 student and staff witnesses, backed up the transgender student’s claims that the two male students had been harassing and discriminating against the student during the school year.

Loudoun4All, a group supporting LBGTQ+ rights, said the LCPS filing showed the male students and their families, attorneys and some media knowingly misrepresented that the students were disciplined solely for "expressing discomfort" about a transgender student in the boys' locker room.

The Justice Department said the two boys' "constitutionally protected" religious practice is being labeled as “sex-based discrimination” and “sexual harassment.”

In September, the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights said its investigation found discrimination on the basis of sex against the male students. In addition, the office said the school district did not respond as Title IX requires to sexual harassment claims in the boys' locker room.

Loudoun4All noted the transgender student was also investigated and disciplined for filming in the locker room, which violates LCPS policy. The school district's court filing noted a third male student was present for the locker room incident. However, the video indicated his comments toward the transgender student were not the same or as loud as the other two boys, and witnesses did not back claims against him.

Loudoun County Public Schools and four other Northern Virginia school divisions faced pressure from the Trump administration to revoke their transgender bathroom policies with an Aug. 15 deadline. All five districts held firm with their policies, and the Arlington and Fairfax County school districts filed a lawsuit that a federal judge later dismissed. The federal government put the five districts on high-risk status, which meant that federal funding for Title I schools, special education and nutrition programs would be done by reimbursement only.

In maintaining the bathroom policies, several of the school districts cited the federal ruling in the Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board case. That case involved a transgender student fighting a Virginia school district on allowing him to use the boy's bathroom that matches his gender identity. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled in favor of Gavin Grimm, who claimed the school district's action violated Title IX's Equal Protection Clause.