Four years after Loudoun County Public Schools became the national poster child for cover-ups in the name of advancing the transgender agenda, the schools are again in the news over a gender-based complaint.
In 2021, the school and its leaders were pilloried after it was revealed that school officials knew about a sexual assault in a high school girl’s bathroom by a boy wearing a skirt but didn’t disclose it for weeks.
Now, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares is calling for the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Education to investigate the district over “significant concerns regarding potential violations of Title IX, unlawful retaliation, and viewpoint discrimination,” according to a news release.
“The investigation reveals a disturbing misuse of authority by Loudoun County Public Schools, where students appear to have been targeted not for misconduct, but for expressing their discomfort for being forced to share a locker room with a member of the opposite sex,” Miyares said.
“Title IX was never meant to be used as a weapon against free speech or religious convictions. Every student in Virginia deserves the right to speak openly, think freely, and live according to their conscience without fear of retaliation. Protecting those rights is not political — it’s foundational to who we are as Americans.”
The release said the school retaliated against three male students at Stone Bridge High School after they objected to the school’s policy of letting gender identity determine access to bathrooms and locker rooms.
“Rather than safeguarding the constitutional rights of all students, LCPS appears to be punishing those who hold and express faith-based views,” the release said.
“Furthermore, there are persistent reports that LCPS and the School Board take adverse and potentially unlawful action against parents, teachers, and public speakers,” the release added.
WJLA-TV reported that the root cause of the issue was that a female student used a boys’ locker room and recorded the boys, prompting them to object.
“The boys indeed are the victims in this situation,” Miyares said. “There is no evidence, no corroborating evidence that we have found that they had sexually harassed anyone, that they had done anything even approaching what would be considered sex discrimination. The reality is, is that Loudoun County Schools, what we have found, have bad policy and bad judgment.”
“We’ve also seen, in our opinion, that the three students sincerely held religious beliefs, some of these students in question are Christian, some were Muslim, but they basically were told to be silent, to be quiet and not to express their sincerely held religious beliefs,” he said.
Miyares said the district is “weaponizing” Title IX.
“To go after students that have both sincerely held beliefs, but also pushing a left-wing ideology that vast majority of Virginians and Americans find absurd. It’s what I say, ‘you could be so open-minded your brain falls out,’” he said.
“This is what happens when they push a divisive left-wing ideological agenda, and then they’re telling these students to be quiet when they raise, I think, legitimate objections,” he said, noting that without pushback, students might have been punished through their academic records “simply because they said we don’t want a member of the opposite sex in our locker room.”
“Think about the chilling impact that has on our students, where they’re too afraid to speak out on something that is just basic common sense because the school board has weaponized this Title IX to go after these students,” he said.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said that “sex-based discrimination and student safety are both top priorities of this Department of Justice. We will investigate these facts thoroughly, and go where the investigation leads us,” according to Fox News.
“‘Transgender’ policies in Loudoun County schools are stripping countless students of their fundamental rights,” Dhillon said.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Troublesome School District Once Again in DOJ’s Sights After Locker Room Disaster appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.