Administrators of a school district in Missouri are being sued by the American Civil Liberties Union because the school refused to allow a male high school student from using a female bathroom.
The lawsuit alleges that during the 2021-2022 school year, the assistant principal of the Platte County High School told a male high school student known as R.F., could not use the girls’ bathroom and advised him to use the boys’ bathroom or the single gender-neutral bathroom. At the time, R.F. had begun to transition genders and the lawsuit claims that since the Platte County R-3 School District didn’t allow him to use the girls’ bathroom, that R.F’s rights were violated.
In an interview with the Daily Caller, Dr. Hay Harris, the superintendent of the Platte County R-3 School District said “The District is in the early stages of evaluating the legal claims. The District’s focus is, and has always been, providing a safe and caring environment for all students. We plan to provide additional information as we learn more.”
The lawsuit alleges, during the school year R.F. decided to continue using the girls’ bathroom despite being told not to do so and received repeated verbal warnings to not use the bathroom and was ultimately suspended in and out of school for his actions.
R.F. began using the boys’ bathroom in response to the schools punishment where he was allegedly harassed by students and threatened with rape from another male student. It was because of this harassment that R.F. completed the school year at home, virtually.
The Director of Litigation at the ACLU, Gillian Wilcox, addressed the lawsuit in a recent press release which stated, “Forcing transgender students to use the bathroom or locker room that matches their sex designated at birth is not only discrimination but dangerous and causes serious harm to Missouri’s youth. Both through the constitution and by statute the government, a school in this case, is prohibited from discriminating against the people it is supposed to protect on the basis of either their sex or disability.”
The debate continues throughout the country as many parents, school boards and lawmakers decide on the proper course of action when it comes to separating transgender students based on gender identity rather than their gender at birth in locker rooms, bathrooms, and sports teams. In Virginia, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration instituted a set of rules that all public schools will require athletics to be separated by the gender at the time of birth. However in Wisconsin, a judge recently blocked a school district from enforcing a policy which did not allow for boys to use girls’ bathrooms.