The Justice Department is seeking to join a lawsuit filed by two families against Loudoun County Public Schools after a pair of high school students were suspended for allegedly harassing another student over their gender identity, including in a locker room incident that sparked conservative ire.
The families of two boys have said they were improperly punished for expressing their discomfort with the presence of a student who “appeared as female” in a boys’ locker room at Stone Bridge High School. Their suit also seeks to overturn a policy in the Virginia school district that allows students to use bathrooms, locker rooms and other facilities that match their gender identity, and not just their sex.
In a court filing, the Justice Department said the religious beliefs of the suspended boys, who are Christian, “inevitably collided with” the facilities policy, and that they were punished for expressing their views.
“From using preferred pronouns to sharing intimate spaces with students of the opposite sex, the School Board’s policy unconstitutionally directs Plaintiffs to go against their sincere religious beliefs and practice, which require using sex-aligned pronouns and using sex-segregated intimate spaces,” the Justice Department wrote a memo supporting its motion to intervene in the case.
The Loudoun school district has said in court filings that an investigation found the suspended students had for months harassed a student who was assigned female at birth but identifies as male. The district launched an investigation after the student filed a Title IX complaint against three male students in March. Title IX bars discrimination on the basis of sex, which includes gender identity.
As part of the complaint, the student submitted audio and video recordings. In one video, one of the accused boys was heard yelling “girl boy” at the student six times, the district said in a court filing.
The student who filed the complaint has not been publicly identified, and The Washington Post has been unable to reach them.
Loudoun County Public Schools declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation.
The Loudoun district is one of four Northern Virginia school systems targeted by the Trump administration over policies and other protections for transgender students. America First Legal, a conservative organization founded by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and one of two groups who filed the Loudoun families’ lawsuit, has said the policies provide “greater rights to students whose ‘gender identity’ does not match their biological sex.” The districts have said the policies are designed to help make schools a more welcoming environment.
The Education Department took steps to pull funding from the districts after officials refused to change their policies.
Few details about the locker room incident were publicly shared before the case was filed in court in September, but the case drew attention from state officials and the Trump administration, prompting the Justice Department to launch an investigation into the case. Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares also is investigating the incident.
The Education Department has also weighed in on the Loudoun case, saying the district had discriminated against the suspended male students on the basis of sex, and retaliated against them during its investigation. It called on the district to apologize for its handling of the case and rescind the suspensions.
A judge has halted the suspensions while the families’ lawsuit proceeds.
April Bethea contributed to this report.
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