Fight Continues Despite Federal Judge Denying Students Safety and Privacy: On November 1, 2016, the Thomas More Society renewed its request that the federal courts protect student privacy and safety in the case of a Palatine high school student who has been granted access to girls’ locker rooms because he identifies himself as a transgender girl.

In the lawsuit, numerous students and parents have asked the court to require Township 211 High School District in Palatine to reinstate its original practice of providing separate restrooms and locker rooms on the basis of students’ biological sex. However, Magistrate Judge Jeffrey T. Gilbert of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division issued a report and recommendation to the District Judge that the school district be permitted to retain to its controversial policy of allowing students to access the bathrooms and locker rooms reserved for the opposite sex. The district’s policy mirrors the one adopted by the United States Department of Education which is enforced in conjunction with the United States Department of Justice against all schools in the United States.

Along with attorneys from Alliance Defending Freedom, Thomas More Society filed official objections to the Magistrate’s recommendation on November 1, 2016, asking the District Court Judge to set it aside and find that the law requires the school to protect the privacy of all its students.

Thomas More Society Special Counsel Jocelyn Floyd explained:

“School policy and practice should protect the privacy and safety of all students. The government’s new policy, affirmed by the Magistrate Judge’s recommendation, can only be justified by turning the actual protections of Title IX on their head. Instead of protecting equal rights in access to educational programs, the new policy requires schools to allow members of the opposite sex to enter a locker room or bathroom where minors are changing clothes and attending to personal bodily needs. This is not equality—it’s an outrageous violation of these students’ rights.”

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it will hear a similar case, G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board. There, a lawsuit seeks to overturn a Virginia school district’s policy of maintaining separate restrooms for members of each sex while providing individual, private facilities for students uncomfortable with using a facility that corresponds to their biological sex.

“We are encouraged that the Supreme Court is willing to hear this important case and hope that it will affirm the right and the responsibility of a school district to adopt policies that protect the privacy and safety of all students,” said Floyd.

Read the November 1, 2016 Plaintiffs’ Response to Magistrate’s Report and Recommendation here.