Marion County (Fla.) School Board: Only Girls in Girls Locker Rooms
Students must use the bathroom or locker room that corresponds with their biological sex, Florida’s Marion County School Board voted Tuesday night.
As The Daily Caller reports, the 4-to-1 vote “overturned a policy created by the district’s superintendent, which allowed students to pick their own bathroom based on ‘gender identity.'”
Under the new policy, which went into effect Wednesday, a student who self-identifies as transgender is able to request an appropriate alternative facility if he or she feels uncomfortable using the facilities that match their physical plumbing. This is not good enough for the LGBT lobby.
The ACLU didn’t even wait for the vote to threaten a lawsuit, claiming that the policy violates Title IX sex discrimination requirements and the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals tossed aside a Virginia school district’s similar effort to keep the sexes separated.
“This policy protects the rights and safety of all Marion County students,” Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel said in a statement quoted by The Daily Caller. “The four board members who voted to approve the policy should be commended for their common sense and courage in the face of threats and intimidation by the ACLU and its allies, who desire to impose radical ‘gender theory’ on schoolchildren.” Staver is offering to represent the school board for free if a lawsuit is filed.
Staver was on hand for the meeting, representing the man who had brought the suit, Harrell Phillips. Phillips told the school board how his son was extremely upset last week to find a female student in the boy’s bathroom at his high school, Vanguard High School in Ocala, Fla. Said Staver:
“This was a place where he has a reasonable expectation that he will not encounter the opposite sex. This deeply violated his religious beliefs of personal modesty and his constitutional right to privacy.”