BOYERTOWN >> A high school student and his parents have sued the Boyertown Area School District claiming the district’s transgender policy violated his right to privacy.
The suit, filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, claims that the male student was exposed involuntarily to an undressed female student while he was changing in his school’s locker room in October.
“Our laws and customs have long recognized that we shouldn’t have to undress in front of persons of the opposite sex,” said Kellie Fiedorek, a lawyer for The Alliance Defending Freedom. “But now some schools are forcing our children into giving up their privacy rights.”
The action comes a few weeks after the Trump administration rescinded Obama-era regulations that had instructed schools to allow students to use bathrooms and locker rooms in line with their expressed gender identity as opposed to their sex assigned at birth.
Attorneys from The Alliance Defending Freedom, a group that describes itself as “a non-profit legal organization that advocates for the right of people to freely live out their faith,” are co-counseling the student and his family in the suit, along with the Independence Law Center, a Pennsylvania-based pro-bono legal organization dedicated to advancing civil rights.
The student, a junior who has been referred to in the suit as “Joel Doe,” was standing in his underwear about to put on his gym clothes when he realized that a female student, who was also getting dressed, was in the locker room, the suit says. The second student had recently begun transitioning from female to male, and was wearing shorts and a bra when the first student noticed her, according to Fiedorek.
The Alliance Defending Freedom claims in a press release announcing the lawsuit that the school district opened the school’s sex-specific bathrooms and locker rooms to students of the opposite sex without notifying parents or students.
The suit alleges that the student came to Assistant Principal Wayne Foley asking if anything could be done to protect the student’s right to privacy and that Foley responded by telling the student to “tolerate” it and make it as “natural” as he possibly can.
The suit claims, “because of the privacy violation, as well as the District’s subsequent actions, Joel Doe also experiences anxiety, stress, intimidation, fear, apprehension and loss of dignity.”
“No school should rob any student of his legally protected personal privacy,” said Independence Law Center chief counsel Randall Wenger in a press release. “We trust that our children won’t be forced into emotionally vulnerable situations like this when they are in the care of our schools because it’s a school’s duty to protect and respect the bodily privacy and dignity of all students. In this case, school officials are clearly ignoring that duty.”
The lawsuit is claiming sexual harassment under Title IX, a federal law; violation of the fundamental right to bodily privacy under the U.S. Constitution; and violation of a state privacy law.
Boyertown Superintendent Richard Faidley, Boyertown Area High School Principal Brett Cooper and Foley are named as defendants in the suit.
Faidley declined to comment on the litigation.
Eliza Byard, executive director of Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, said the situation could have easily been resolved without a lawsuit had the school made the necessary arrangements for the student who feels uneasy. Byard said the school could have let “Joel Doe” use single occupancy or staff bathrooms and locker rooms.
“The existence of a transgender person living their life appropriately at school cannot constitute sexual harassment,” Byard said. “It might make another student uncomfortable and in that case, there is a common sense legal remedy of providing separate accommodations to the student who feels uncomfortable.”
After the Obama regulations were rolled back, it is now up to the states to interpret anti-discrimination laws when deciding how students can use school facilities. Facing criticism, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos met with several transgender families earlier this month and vowed to protect all students.
