Judge tells anti-trans parents to go sit down & leave the kids alone

A federal judge has told a group of anti-trans parents to mind their own business after the group filed a lawsuit challenging an Ohio school district’s bathroom policy.

The attempts to meddle do not “pass legal muster,” he wrote in his ruling, saying that the group has no reason to sue.

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“Not every contentious debate concerning matters of public importance presents a cognizable federal lawsuit,” Judge Michael Newman wrote, denying their petition to stop the Bethel Local School District’s policy that allows a single transgender middle school student to use the restroom that aligns with her gender identity.

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While the girl was initially forced to use the faculty or nurse’s bathrooms because they were single occupancy, they were frequently occupied. She “felt ostracized, humiliated, and targeted by other students who taunted her for using the separate bathroom.” School administrators and board members accommodated the student by allowing her to go to the girls’ room.

The parents sued with various constitutional claims, from religious freedom to a right to raise their children as they see fit. But the judge wasn’t impressed with their attempts to set school policy based on their personal beliefs.

“Although parents have the right to make decisions about where to send their children to school, they do not have a constitutional right to revoke a school’s policy on student bathroom usage… let alone show that the possible presence of a transgender student in the bathroom is a ‘substantial burden’ to the Plaintiffs’ Free Exercise Clause rights,” he wrote in the opinion.

While it is “clear that a parent has the right to control where their child goes to school,” he ruled, “that is where their control ends. Public school policies that direct school operations, like the Board’s policy here—prescribing the use of student bathrooms—are for the school to decide.”

Last week a different judge ruled in favor of three transgender students in Indiana whose schools forbade them from using bathrooms matching their gender identities. The court upheld a lower court’s preliminary injunction that said the schools must let trans students use facilities associated with their genders.