Dive Brief:
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The Department of Justice announced on Monday it plans to join a lawsuit against Virginia's Loudoun County School Board for alleged religious discrimination after two Christian high school boys were suspended for complaining about a transgender student in their locker room.
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In fall 2024 and spring 2025, the case says, a transgender student accessed a male-designated locker room at Stone Bridge High School, as permitted under district policy. After they raised concerns and filed complaints, the two Christian students were ultimately suspended for 10 days under Title IX for statements allegedly made on a recording the transgender student captured in the locker room.
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“Students do not shed their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse gate,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in a statement Monday. “Loudoun County’s decision to advance and promote gender ideology tramples on the rights of religious students who cannot embrace ideas that deny biological reality.”
Dive Insight:
The Justice Department's involvement in the case, S.W. et al. v. Loudoun County School Board, marks another front in the Trump administration's battle against transgender student inclusion in school curriculum, facilities and other public spaces. It also comes after the Education Department found the district — along with four other Northern Virginia school systems — in violation of Title IX for having transgender-inclusive policies.
In August, the Education Department put Loudoun County and the other districts on reimbursement-only status for federal funding despite the districts asking for the typical 90-day response period to its Office for Civil Rights violation findings, according to court documents. The OCR finding in Loudoun County was related to the same incident that is now also the subject of the Justice Department lawsuit.
Following the string of OCR findings in the Northern Virginia districts, two of the boards representing those school systems — Fairfax County School Board and Arlington School Board — sued the administration in August for alleged loss of funding.
Reimbursement only status means that districts are required to pay their education expenses up front and then request reimbursement for expenditures to access Education Department funding.
In the latest legal dispute, the Justice Department is requesting to intervene in a case that was filed by Founding Freedoms Law Center, which defends parental rights, and law firm America First Legal, which litigates to "oppose lawless government overreach and fight to restore the rule of law in the United States."
"Plaintiffs are Christians and hold religious beliefs directing the importance of personally maintaining basic distinctions between males and females, and hold significant religious objections to being in a state of undress in the presence of the opposite sex or with an undressed member of the opposite sex, particularly in sex-separate changing facilities," said the original complaint filed in September by AFL and FFLC.
Another student involved in the incident, who was Muslim and also complained against the transgender student, was allegedly cleared in a Title IX investigation without suspension, according to the lawsuit.
Additionally, the lawsuit alleges the transgender student was investigated for violating a district policy against recording in locker rooms and ultimately cleared.
The two firms filing the lawsuit were granted a temporary restraining order to prevent the two Christian students' suspension and allow them to return to class. They now seeks financial damages and a permanent stop to the district policy allowing transgender students from accessing facilities aligning with their gender identity.
Loudoun County Public Schools said in a statement to K-12 Dive that it does not comment publicly on pending legal matters.
