Virginia’s Loudoun County and Fairfax County, suburbs of the nation’s capital that are two of the largest and most wealthy counties in the country, have faced numerous controversies regarding their pushing of LGBT ideology.
In May 2021, a teenage girl was sexually assaulted in the girls’ bathroom at Stone Bridge High School in Loudoun County by a boy wearing a skirt who identified as “gender-fluid.” After a lawsuit was filed, the trans-identifying boy moved to a different school, where he sexually harassed another girl under a similar school policy that allowed him to use the girls’ bathroom.
In December 2022, The Washington Stand reported, two officials at Loudoun County Public Schools were indicted “on charges related to attempts to cover up two sexual assaults in a girls’ bathroom and in an empty classroom perpetrated against female students by a male student who identified as a transgender female.”
Last November, Virginia school policies, as well as similar policies in other states, were met with student walkouts and protests.
But despite immense pushback, schools continue to establish policies that prioritize transgender ideology.
Fairfax County Public Schools, for example, first adopted Regulation 2603 in October 2020 that allows students to use the bathroom or locker room “consistent with the student’s gender identity” and requires that students refer to trans-identifying students “by their chosen name and pronoun, regardless of the name and gender recorded in the student’s permanent pupil record.” (The policy was updated in April 2022.)
But this week, America First Legal, a conservative nonprofit, filed a lawsuit against Fairfax County Public Schools on behalf of a high school senior who says the transgender bathroom and pronoun policies go against her Roman Catholic beliefs.
Abiding by these regulations, the student told America First Legal, “forces her to lie.” As such, the lawsuit specifically emphasized the school district’s discrimination “against female students on the basis of sex and religion and violated their free-speech rights under the Virginia Constitution.”
AFL senior adviser Ian Prior said in a written statement released Tuesday:
Fairfax County Public Schools appears to believe that its policies and regulations can override the Virginia Constitution’s protections for religious beliefs, speech, and from government discrimination on the basis of sex and religious beliefs. It is well past time for FCPS to stop sacrificing the constitutional rights of its students so that it can implement a state-sanctioned ideology that demands compliance in speech, beliefs, and conduct.
The lawsuit also described the regulation as “dystopian” because it “requires students to adhere to a woke agenda that denies reality.”
And it concluded of the Fairfax County school system: “FCPS—and all schools across America—have prioritized radical gender indoctrination and government-compelled speech inside and outside the classroom, all to the detriment of America’s future generations. America First Legal will not stand for this egregious indoctrination scheme and is proud to bring FCPS to court to hold the school district accountable.”
Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for education studies at Family Research Council, is a resident of Fairfax County. “As a former FCPS parent and a current taxpayer, I am so grateful to this student for standing up and to America First Legal for filing this lawsuit,” Kilgannon told The Washington Stand.
Kilgannon continued:
When FCPS started down the gender identity road, many parents and residents had concerns and we voiced those concerns. But it became clear that the overwhelmingly progressive voting base in the county would not tolerate dissent from the gender worldview. The pressure for students not to complain or even ask questions about gender issues was and still is very strong.
Previous lawsuits in this area have been filed, Kilgannon explained, from “teachers who didn’t want to use pronouns or who pushed back against this agenda in various ways.”
She asked for prayers for “this brave student and her family, that they will have peace and strength throughout this process, in addition to ultimate success.”
Kilgannon added: “This suit will give voice to the vast majority of students who, having known a classmate for most of their lives, are faced with calling that person by opposite-sex pronouns or pretending they are the sex they are not; girls who don’t want boys in their private spaces.”
“Gender ideology requires too much of everyone—we all have to participate, affirm, and promote it or we will be called bullies, transphobic, or worse,” she said. “Lawsuits like this one are a wonderful way to push back on this evil.”
First published by The Washington Stand
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