Justice Department sues Loudoun Co. School Board, citing religious discrimination in bathroom policy
The Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against the Loudoun County School Board, accusing the Northern Virginia school district of discriminating against two Christian students who were suspended after objecting to a transgender student using boys the locker room.
In a news release Monday, the Justice Department said the county school system applied a policy pertaining to the acceptance of gender ideology onto two Christian and biologically male students, in violation of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.
“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,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division wrote in the release.
In May of this year, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares began an investigation into a March incident, in which three Stone Bridge High School boys reported that a transgender male student, who is biologically female, recorded a conversation they were having about being “uncomfortable” that he was in the boys’ locker room.
Miyares challenged the policy of the school board, which allows students to use bathrooms and locker rooms based on their gender identity — Policy 8040 — and said the suspension of the three students initiated a “retaliatory Title IX investigation.”
The DOJ said that Loudoun County suspended the boys for 10 days on the basis of “sex-based discrimination” and made them “submit to a ‘Comprehensive Student Support Plan’ that further violates the boys’ right to free exercise of religion at school.”
The lawsuit is pending before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
LCPS denies those allegations, saying the students harassed the transgender student and threatened violence.
Heather Bardot, attorney for the school board, said in an Oct. 6 opposition of the motion that the transgender male student was “tired of the relentless harassment” and decided to film the three boys in the locker room to have proof in a formal Title IX complaint he filed just a few days later.
Loudoun County Public Schools declined WTOP’s request for comment. WTOP has also reached out to Bardot for comment.