Ohio Parents Sue School Board Over Transgender Restroom Policy
Parents in Ohio are suing their local school board members for changing the gendered-facility policies to allow students to use whichever restroom or locker room best correlated with their “gender identity.” Parents allege that changing the policy without notifying parents or holding a public meeting to address the change is in violation of the Ohio Open Meetings Act.
Bethel Local School District claimed that they had “no choice” but to change the policy without public knowledge, and “because Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, 20 U.S.C. §§ 1681–1688, (“Title IX”) required it, the Federal government was threatening school funding, and potential litigation was imminent.” The lawsuit continued, “The Board’s claims were incorrect . . . Title IX and its long-standing implementing regulations expressly provide for Bethel’s historic practice of separating intimate facilities based on biological sex.”
The group filing the lawsuit consists largely of Christian and Muslim parents who believe that the district’s policy violates their right to determine how their children will be educated, and in what environment. Two of the Muslim parents in the district even donated funds out-of-pocket to build a single-stall restroom at their child’s school for transgender students, in an effort to keep them from using a facility that did not align with their biological sex. This however, proved futile, and school board members refused to halt the new rule even after parents extended this offer, providing more evidence that the purpose of the policy is ideological, not practical.
The parents allege that students “avoid using the restroom at school if at all possible” because they feel violated by the presence of the opposite sex in a private area. The lawsuit suggests that students deserve access to separate intimate facilities on the basis of biological sex for reasons including, “safety, privacy, modesty, religion, and historical views of sex.”
Many schools around the county have attempted to implement policies that throw religious or traditional families under the bus for the benefit of the small number of students suffering from gender dysphoria. The conversation surrounding transgender students in public schools largely escalated after two teenage girls were sexually assaulted by a male student wearing a skirt who went into female restrooms in a Loudoun County Virginia school. The horrific indecent occurred after the school district implemented a “trans-inclusive” restroom policy.
The state of Iowa made it a legal requirement for schools to accommodate transgender students at the cost of others feeling uncomfortable, despite parent’s disapproval. Any family that holds traditional or religious values is told that their views are “transphobic” and do not matter, the only belief system allowed in public schools in 2022 is leftism.
Schools have since been begun to accept all kinds of identities, though research suggests that the gender-craze is not only a social contagion, but also that children often “grow out” of gender dysphoria as they age. “Affirmative care,” which includes taking social and medical measures to confirm a child’s perceived identity, causes unnecessary physical and psychological damage to the child. Schools should not be adopting this “care” model, as it not only violates the rights of parents and students, but also creates confusion surrounding basic truths and realities.
