Last May, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported that several male students, discomfited by a female student using their locker room and filming them on her phone, were being investigated by the Virginia Attorney General’s office for sexual harassment under Title IX.

The saga began early this year, when Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) opened an investigation after several male students at Stone Bridge High School asked why the girl, who identifies as male, was allowed to access their locker room. According to the sports and political commentary website, OutKick, the biological female “secretly recorded the boys when they questioned why a girl was in their locker room, and she later accused them of sexual harassment and sex-based discrimination.” The LCPS launched its investigation despite the fact that the girl’s actions in recording the boys was in itself a violation of district policy.

The mother of one of the boys complained that the presence of the female in the boys’ locker room made him uncomfortable, which led to Governor Glenn Youngkin asking Virginia’s Attorney General, Jason Miyares, to investigate. According to Fox News, the school-district probe was later handed off “to the U.S. Justice Department and the federal Department of Education.”

In August, the male students were suspended, allegedly because LCPS found two of the three boys “guilty of sexual harassment and sex-based discrimination” in violation of Title IX. The suspension set off a firestorm that threatens to impact the upcoming November elections in both Loudoun County and the State of Virginia. Miyares described it as “a disturbing misuse of authority by Loudoun County Public Schools.”

This is hardly the first time public schools in Loudoun County have stirred controversy and created national news. Education Reporter has written extensively on their antics since 2021. (See as examples the October 2021, November 2021, and January 2022 issues.)

While the school district denies that the boys were suspended for complaining about the girl’s presence in their locker room, parents say that’s exactly what happened.

Fox News affiliate, FOX 5 DC, reported that the boys’ parents and their attorney are appealing the school board’s decision, calling it “absolutely devastating” and “a shock.” Parent Renae Smith has already moved her family to North Dakota. She told Fox 5, “I have a teenager who should be focused on school and football and not branded with a false label that can follow him for life.”

The father of another of the students said: “I think this has gone a little too far and that they are trying to make an example of our students. It’s just hurtful ... It’s not just about us. If Loudoun can twist Title lX to punish my son for questioning their unlawful policy, then no student is safe!”

According to the The Daily Caller, the suspension of one of the students has recently been blocked by a federal judge, at least temporarily. The court order notes that the school district offered “a private changing area to plaintiffs but not to the female student accessing the male locker room.” The order also states that a Muslim student “who seems to have engaged in similar activity” as the other boys was not similarly charged.

Bathroom policy retained

In early September, Virginia’s Lieutenant Governor, Winsome Earle-Sears, the Republican hopeful to replace Governor Youngkin in November, along with John Reid, the candidate hoping to take her place as lieutenant governor, criticized the Loudoun County School Board for voting in a closed session to retain the county’s divisive transgender bathroom policy. The board’s reaffirmation of the controversial policy is in defiance of the Trump Education Department’s reversal of former President Joe Biden’s Title IX rewrite.

In fact, the Education Department had already announced on August 19 that it was cutting “federal funding to LCPS and four other Northern Virginia districts for violating Title IX.” Specifically, the Department found these districts in violation of federal civil rights law for “allowing students to occupy intimate facilities based on gender identity, not biological sex.”

The districts impacted are Fairfax County, Prince William County, Alexandria City, and Arlington, which OutKick explains “are now considered ‘high risk’ within the federal grant system.” This means all federal money will be awarded “through reimbursement status only, meaning schools must front their own expenses and prove those expenditures were legal before receiving any money back.”

Education Secretary, Linda McMahon, stated in a press release that “states and school districts cannot openly violate federal law while simultaneously receiving federal funding with no additional scrutiny.... School Divisions that are choosing to abide by woke gender ideology in place of federal law must now prove they are using every single federal dollar for a legal purpose....”

But as Virginia House Delegate Geary Higgins (R-Dist. 30), the only elected Republican remaining in Loudoun County, told Fox News Digital that the Loudoun County board “continues to double and triple down on their illegal policy at taxpayers’ expense while putting the privacy and safety of our children in jeopardy.”

Political fallout

As previously noted, the Loudoun County School Board’s insistence on continuing its transgender bathroom policy, along with the district’s punishment of the male students, has drawn the ire of both local and state Republican officials.

In referring the LCPS case to the U.S. Justice Department and the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), Virginia AG Mayares said his findings showed the district’s measures “to be unlawful, discriminatory, and retaliatory.” Governor Glenn Youngkin also criticized the district for its actions.

Then, in a brazen show of what Fox News’ host Laura Ingraham called “liberal racism on full display,” LGBT protestors showed up outside an Arlington school board meeting brandishing signs which read: “Hey Winsome, if trans people can’t share my bathroom, then blacks can’t share my water fountain.” In decrying the spectacle, Ingraham referred to Arlington as “the People’s Republic of Arlington.” Sears, who is black, declined to address the signs when Ingraham asked her about them, and instead took the high road by focusing on her opponent, Democrat gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger.

Earle-Sears accused Spanberger of wanting “girls and boys nude in the same bathrooms and locker rooms.” She characterized the positions of the Democrats in general as “you can’t get any worse than this.”

Spanberger reportedly presents herself as a “moderate,” but has refused to take a position on the latest Loudoun County controversy. Instead, OutKick noted that her campaign staff issued a “vague statement” about her support for “the safety of Virginia’s kids.” But some observers wonder exactly which kids she is talking about. The boys being punished are not safe from unfair labels that may haunt them and the disciplinary records that will follow them as they apply for admission to college.

While Earle-Sears is said to be trailing in her race to become Virginia’s next governor — the election is November 4 — the Washington Examiner reports that the gap has narrowed. “Spanberger has 49% support among registered Virginia voters compared to Earle-Sears’s 40%, according to a Sept. 9 poll released by Virginia Commonwealth University’s L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs.” This is a jump of 3 percentage points for Earle-Sears in two months. She will no doubt gain additional benefit from her interview with Ingraham, which enraged liberals, who railed about the air time she received and bashed her as a weak candidate.

Whatever the outcome, Earle-Sears has been a staunch proponent of traditional values and solid academics in the state’s public schools. (See Education Reporter, January 2023.) As she told Fox News Digital: “Biological differences matter ... It is not political. It’s common sense, and somebody has to stand up and speak for parents.”

State Delegate Higgins asserted that “the best way to fix the issue is to elect Earle-Sears and Reid and reelect Miyares, followed by a ‘common-sense’ new school board in Loudoun’s next municipal election.”

Meanwhile, parents and conservatives in Loudoun County are awaiting the outcome of the lawsuits, suspensions, and the upcoming elections, holding their collective breath.

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