A national legal organization has sent a letter to Jefferson Country Public Schools in Kentucky explaining why the law is not on the side of schools who opt to give students access to restrooms of the sex they perceive themselves to be.
Citizenlink.com is reporting on the case of Atherton High School in Louisville whose principal, Thomas Aberli, agreed to allow a male student who believes he is female – but who admits to having a girlfriend – to begin using the girls’ restroom. The school designated one of the girls’ restrooms for the boy’s use.
However, parents were not happy with the decision.
“The concerns of one student are being given more weight and legitimacy than the concerns of many other members of Atherton,” said one parent, David Kelty.
At least one local lawyer agrees.
“Imagine this scenario—a transgender student, a biological boy who decides that he wants to identify with the female gender, and yet he acknowledges that he has a girlfriend and is sexually attracted to girls,” said Clinton J. Elliott, a Louisville attorney, to The Courier-Journal. “Are parents supposed to be okay with allowing such boys to use the girls’ restroom and locker room facilities?”
Most parents would say no, which is why attorneys at Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a law firm dedicated to transforming the legal system and defending religious liberty, were contacted.
ADF counselors Jeremy Tedesco, Sr. and Jonathan Scruggs, along with Clinton Elliott, sent a letter to Jefferson County Public Schools in which they set the record straight about the law and what is becoming a new trend in America’s already troubled public schools – allowing children to use restrooms and locker rooms based on whatever sex they believe they are.
“Contrary to what Principal Aberli may believe, neither he nor JCPS (Jefferson County Public Schools) is legally obligated to open restrooms and changing areas to opposite-sex students,” the ADF letter informs. “Although some school districts in other parts of the country have recently done so as a means to prevent sex discrimination under Title IX, Title IX requires no such thing.”
The letter goes on to inform the school about what Title IX says: “[n]o person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
No court in the US has ever interpreted this statute to mean that schools are required to give students access to opposite-sex restrooms and changing areas.
In fact, in a case involving a transsexual man who sued a community college for firing him after he attempted to use a women’s bathroom, the Ninth Circuit ruled in favor of the college because it “proffered evidence that it banned Kastle from using the women’s restroom for safety reasons.”
The same argument can certainly be made in support of any school that does not wish to accommodate a transgender student by opening up the private facilities of the opposite sex.
“Permitting students to use opposite-sex restrooms and changing areas would seriously endanger student safety, undermine parental authority, and severely impair an environment conducive to learning,” the ADF warns in the letter. “These dangers are so clear-cut that a school district allowing such activity would clearly expose itself—and its teachers—to tort liability.”
The ADF is therefore recommending that the school reverse its decision and is offering to represent them pro bono should anyone try to sue the school for opening up their restrooms to transgendered students.
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