A Minnesota school is allowing a partially clothed boy to “twerk” in front of female classmates while they changed their clothes for physical education and sports events, prompting a federal lawsuit alleging violations of the Minnesota Constitution, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, federal law and the U.S. Constitution.
It’s not the first such case brought by lawyers with the Alliance Defending Freedom, which already has filed cases against school districts in Illinois and Ohio over the same issue, which is the Obama administration’s attempt to rewrite the federal Title IX law concerning education.
The law bans discrimination based on sex in public schools, but Obama is interpreting “sex” to also mean “gender identity” to allow boys who say they are girls to enter girls restrooms, lockers and showers.
That’s exactly the scenario in the Virginia, Minnesota, School District, where officials adopted the Washington redefinition to allow “Student X,” a boy, to enter girls’ facilities at will.
The lawsuit was brought by ADF on behalf of multiple female students and their parents.
It notes under the district’s policy the boy “dances to loud music with sexually explicit lyrics in the locker room while ‘twerking,’ ‘grinding,’ and lifting up his skirt to reveal his underwear,” according to the lawsuit.
See what American education has become, in “Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children.”
The boy also “commented on girls’ bodies while in the girls’ locker room, including asking Girl Plaintiff F her bra size and asking her to ‘trade body parts’ with him both while he and Girl Plaintiff F were in the girls’ locker room and outside the locker room in the gym.”
And when several girls obtained permission to use a different locker room, he followed them there to change, the lawsuit explains.
School officials did not return a WND request for comment.
As a result, the lawsuit states, the girls are suffering “anxiety, stress, humiliation, embarrassment, intimidation, fear, apprehension and distress.”
Some of the girls likely will transfer to other public schools, homeschool or go to private schools, for which their parents will have to obtain additional employment to subsidize, the complaint explains.
The lawsuit also names the Departments of Education and Justice as complicit in the change of the definition of “sex” as well as threats to withhold funding from the school district.
“School policies should promote the rights and safety of every student, but that’s not what Virginia Public Schools is doing – and it’s certainly not what the departments of Education and Justice are doing,”” said ADF Senior Counsel Gary McCaleb. “No child should be forced into an intimate setting, like a locker room, with someone of the opposite sex. Telling girls that their privacy and modesty don’t merit a private and secure changing area is an attack on women.
“The school district should rescind its privacy-violating policies, and the court should order the DOE and DOJ to stop bullying school districts with falsehoods about what federal law requires.”
Added ADF Legal Counsel Doug Wardlow: “Federal bureaucrats cannot simply write letters to redefine the meaning of a federal law to serve their own political ends. The Department of Education went beyond what it is legally and constitutionally allowed to do, and the DOJ is out of bounds in enforcing the DOE’s false interpretation of the law. In fact, several federal courts have already rejected the DOE’s interpretation of Title IX.”
The core of the Obama administration’s argument is that Congress, when it adopted Title IX in 1972, intended for boys to enter girls restrooms and girls to enter boys’ facilities when it banned discrimination based on “sex.”
That interpretation was never argued prior to the Obama administration’s campaign for transgenders.
ADF said: “The DOE and DOJ base their threats against school districts on the agencies’ inaccurate interpretation of Title IX, a 1972 federal law intended to protect women from invidious discrimination and that flatly prohibits schools from discriminating ‘on the basis of sex.’ Contrary to what the DOE and DOJ are saying, Title IX’s existing regulations specifically state that a school receiving federal funds can ‘provide separate toilet, locker room, and shower facilities on the basis of sex’ without putting that funding at risk.”
ADF-allied attorney Renee Carlson is serving as local counsel in the case, Privacy Matters v. United States Department of Education, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota.
The case asks for injunctions to halt the schools’ permission for boys to use girls’ showers and for the court to retain jurisdiction in the case to see that its orders are carried out.
“The policy denies Girl Plaintiffs access to educational programs – including classes, athletics, private locker rooms and private restrooms – which, in turn, excludes Girl Plaintiffs from educational programs and activities in violation of Title IX,” the lawsuit contends.
Besides the cases already brought by ADF, there are other cases over the issue. WND reported last month a federal judge in Texas blocked the president’s order to open public school restrooms and shower rooms according to “gender identity” and allow boys who believe they are girls to use girls’ facilities.
U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor of Fort Worth found that the Obama administration did not follow proper procedures in creating the directives. Further, he said the guidelines contradicted existing statutes and regulatory texts, the Dallas Morning News reported.
The judge pointed out, “It cannot be disputed that the plain meaning of the term sex as used in [existing law] when it was enacted by DOE following passage of Title IX meant the biological and anatomical differences between male and female students as determined at their birth.”
The U.S. Supreme Court already has stepped into the issue, blocking a court order in Virginia that gave a girl who identifies as a boy the right to use boys’ restrooms. The order will stand until the Supreme Court decides whether to accept the case.
See what American education has become, in “Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children.”
The decision in Fort Worth came in a case brought by Texas and about a dozen other states. Texas officials said the administration’s demand “hold a gun to the head” of school districts, threatening them with the loss of funding.