American First Legal (AFL) sent a letter Thursday to the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Education (ED) calling on them to investigate five Virginia school districts for allegedly failing to protect girls’ spaces.
The public school systems of Alexandria, Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William, all located in Northern Virginia, allegedly have policies that allow children to use bathrooms and locker rooms based on their gender identity in violation of federal law, the letter claims. President Donald Trump’s administration has made it clear that Title IX, a rule meant to protect women and girls from discrimination, would be interpreted based on biological sex, while women and girls must be protected from “gender ideology extremism” that allows boys to intrude on their protected spaces.
“It’s a slap in the face to parents and the administration that these Northern Virginia school districts would continue to so blatantly defy the United States Constitution and the Supreme Court of the United States,” Ian Prior, Senior Counselor at America First Legal, said in a press release. (RELATED: Male Student ‘Switches Gender’ To Watch Girls Change In Locker Room, Civil Rights Complaint Says)
The DOJ and ED did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
People gather outside the Stonewall Inn for a memorial and vigil for the Oklahoma teenager who died following a fight in a high school bathroom on February 26, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
AFL alleges the districts are using a court’s decision in Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board, a case arguing a Virginia school discriminated against a transgender student by making the individual use private, single-sex restrooms, to claim they are required to allow students to use whichever restroom they desire. AFL argues that not only was the case wrongly decided and may soon be overturned, but even as it stands, “it was a highly fact-specific case” and cannot be applied broadly for all school districts to base their policies on.
The Supreme Court refused to hear the case in 2021, leaving the decision to the lower courts.
The district’s policies also extend beyond the Grimm ruling due to them allowing children’s gender identities and subsequent accommodations to be hidden from the child’s parents, AFL alleges. The policies don’t appear to require a student to “consistently, persistently, and insistently” express a particular gender identity and instead allow students to use whichever restroom they desire without a verified diagnosis, unlike in the Grimm case, according to AFL.
“Privacy and confidentiality are critical for transgender students who do not have supportive families,” Fairfax County Public Schools’ (FCPS) “Gender-Expansive and Transgender Students Guidance Document,” included in the complaint letter, reads. “If a student is not ready or able to safely share with their family about their transgender status, this should be respected. There are no regulations requiring school staff to notify a parent or guardian of a student’s request to affirm their gender identity, and school staff should work with students to help them share the information with their family when they are ready to do so.”
The five school districts did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
“[P]arents should know that when these school districts cite Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board as the reason for these policies, they are gaslighting them,” Prior continued. “An even cursory reading of that decision, however wrongly decided it may be, makes clear that these five school districts have used a very narrow ruling as a pretext to establish a paradoxical scheme in which sex discrimination, religious discrimination, and violation of parental rights must all be sacrificed to satisfy the reality-defying perspective of a special interest group that is attempting to hijack public education and common sense.”
The school districts are already under investigation by ED due to similar allegations made by AFL in February. Fairfax County Public Schools was placed under investigation again after it was alleged that the district illegally rewrote a magnet school’s admissions policy to discriminate based on race.
Loudoun County Public Schools became infamous in 2021 when it was exposed for allegedly attempting to cover up several sexual assault allegations. Now, Virginia’s attorney general has once again placed the district under the microscope after several male students at one high school complained about a girl recording students in the boys’ locker room.
Arlington Public Schools’ policy allowed a serial sex offender to watch young girls change in a high school locker room for months before he was finally arrested in December 2024. The district still doubled down on its so-called inclusive policy.
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