The Daily Caller News Foundation – Reagan Reese on August 2, 2023
The American Civil Liberties Union sued a Missouri school district Monday after administrators allegedly refused to let a male high school student use the girls’ bathroom.
Ahead of the 2021-2022 school year, the assistant principal of Platte County High School allegedly advised a male student, referred to as R.F., who had begun to transition genders, that R.F. could no longer use the girls’ bathroom and could either use the boys’ restroom or the single gender-neutral restroom at the high school, according to the lawsuit. The ACLU is suing Platte County R-3 School District, alleging that the refusal to let R.F. use the girls’ restroom violated R.F.’s rights.
“The District is in the early stages of evaluating the legal claims,” Dr. Jay Harris, the superintendent of Platte County R-3 School District, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The District’s focus is, and has always been, providing a safe and caring environment for all students. We plan to provide additional information as we learn more.”
R.F. continued to use the girls’ restroom during the 2021-2022 school year and was repeatedly punished by the high school with verbal warnings and, eventually, in-school and out-of-school suspensions for doing so, the lawsuit alleges. R.F. began to use the boys’ bathroom after facing punishment from the high school and was allegedly faced with harassment and was threatened with rape by a male student.
R.F. attributes the anxiety and depression suffered to the harassment caused by using the boys’ restroom and from the defendants, the lawsuit alleges. R.F. finished the rest of the school year virtually because of the harassment.
“Forcing transgender students to use the bathroom or locker room that matches their sex designated at birth is not only discrimination but dangerous and causes serious harm to Missouri’s youth,” Gillian Wilcox, Deputy Director of Litigation at the ACLU of Missouri, said in a press release. “Both through the constitution and by statute the government, a school in this case, is prohibited from discriminating against the people it is supposed to protect on the basis of either their sex or disability.”
Throughout the country, parents, school boards and lawmakers are debating whether bathrooms, locker rooms and sports teams should be separated on the basis of gender identity or biological sex; Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration rolled out new regulations in July that require public school athletics to be separated on the basis of biological sex. Last month, a judge blocked a Wisconsin school district from enforcing a policy that keeps boys from using the girls’ bathroom.
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