The legal group Founding Freedoms Law Center is representing high school students after a school launched an investigation following their asking why a female peer was in the boys’ locker room.
One of the boys asked simply, “Why is there a girl in the locker room?” the legal group said in a press release.
School administrators in Loudoun County, Virginia, launched a Title IX investigation against the boys after the female student filed a complaint. She “secretly video-recorded several boys in the locker room, in which some were discussing among themselves discomfort and confusion about why there was a girl changing in their locker room,” the group explained.
The father of one of the students said that his 15-year-old son is “being unfairly targeted for simply asking a basic question that any boy would be asking in that situation,” noting that it is “astonishing that Loudoun school officials are subjecting him to a formal investigation for a bogus charge that could derail his life.”
ABC 7 News reported that a parent said “other boys were uncomfortable” with the situation. “There were other boys asking the same question. They [LCPS] created a very uncomfortable situation. They’re young, they’re 15 years old. They’re expressing their opinions, and now they’re being targeted for expressing those opinions.”
“I have a daughter that’s in high school as well, and if there was a male in there videotaping her in the locker room, I would have issues,” the father stated. “If it’s my son and there’s a female in the locker room videotaping, I have issues. Even if it was somebody of the same sex, I believe that this is an invasion of their privacy.”
The father asserted that his son should not be punished for “expressing his First Amendment right and being able to ask questions.”
“They were having a conversation with their peer group,” he said. “They weren’t directly asking or interacting with this other student, and just the fact that they can’t ask those simple questions, and then if they do, they’re being punished in a way where now we have some serious charges that can affect his future here going forward.”
The Education Department launched an investigation into Loudoun County and other Virginia areas for their gender identity policies in February.
