Title IX is getting another spin through the washer on transgender rights. In November, a group of inter-faith parents sued an Ohio school district for allowing transgender students to use gendered bathrooms.
The parents are suing the Bethel Local School District of Dayton, Ohio, for using students’ stated gender identity rather than their biological sex to determine which bathroom they can use. In the lawsuit, filed on their behalf by America First Legal, the parents accuse the district of violating Title IX and state gender protections. They claim the district is forcing families to conform to its policy favoring transgender students, which infringes on their parental rights.
“Boys are boys, girls are girls, and every student has the right to privacy in intimate spaces that has been enjoyed by every single generation of students before them,” said lead counsel Gene Hamilton. “We are proud to fight for our clients in this important area.”*
Silent switcheroo
Specifically, the parents claim damage because the policy is causing health problems — rather than use bathrooms that allow access to students of the opposite biological sex, students have tried to avoid using bathrooms during school hours, holding their urine for uncomfortable and unhealthy amounts of time. If they do use the restroom, the lawsuit says, it causes anxiety and emotional distress. Girls go to the restroom in pairs or groups in order to make sure they are safe and their modesty protected.
The parents are equally upset that the school district actually has gender-neutral bathrooms for transgender students to use. In one case, a group of Muslim families donated money to have a gender-neutral bathroom built. But after the new policy went into effect in January 2022, the district stopped requiring transgender students to use the gender-neutral bathrooms. Even worse, the parents say, is that the district didn’t even inform them of the policy change.
Before filing the lawsuit, the parents aired their concerns to school officials. His clients, Hamilton said, “tried to find solutions that would value and respect all members of the community,” but they were ignored.
Anybody home?
Not only does the lawsuit claim Title IX infringement, it also targets the state of Ohio, whose officials have been equally as obtuse, the parents say. The state says it can’t help.
“Over the past several years, we have received many questions from local school districts on the topic of accommodating transgender students and whether specific accommodations are required, given the guidance in place at the time,” said Sara Clark, chief legal counsel for the Ohio School Boards Association.“We encourage districts to work with students requesting accommodations on a case-by-case basis.”**
Guidance at the federal level is also MIA. In June 2021, the U.S. Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission applied the 1964 Civil Rights Act to gay, lesbian and transgender people in schools and workplaces. The guidance would apply to schools that accept federal financial aid, extending transgender protections to include use of restrooms and locker rooms.
But twenty states, including Ohio, sued the federal government in 2020 over transgender rights policies. A federal judge blocked the administration’s new rules until these lawsuits are resolved. This ruling brings the whole issue of transgender rights to a standstill. Lacking federal legal protection makes it unlikely that individual states can set and enforce their laws.
Title IX tug-of-war
So, Ohio has kicked the can back to the schools while the issue of transgender rights chugs its way through the agonizingly slow legal process. In the absence of guidance, individual school districts are being forced to form their own policies — and, not surprisingly, are running into legal backlashes like this one.
And the group of parents whose children are in the Bethel school district are happy to push back. “The parental right to direct the education, safety, and upbringing of their children is the oldest fundamental right recognized by the Supreme Court,” they say.
For its part, the Bethel School Board is using Title IX to support its claim that it had no choice but to open the restrooms to transgender students. The move was made to comply with Title IX, it says, because “the federal government was threatening school funding, and potential litigation was imminent.”
I guess we’ll just have to hold our… breaths… waiting for the final outcome.
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* Jeremiah Poff, “Ohio school district sued for transgender bathroom policy that caused students to ‘hold their urine,” Washington Examiner (November 22, 2022). This quote and the next come from this article.
** Jim Gaines, “Transgender rights in Ohio: Protections at stake with challenges underway,” Springfield News-Sun (July 4, 2022).