Report: Boys being investigated for saying they're uncomfortable with girls in their locker room

No end to culture wars in sight

According to this report, Loudoun County has opened a Title IX investigation into three high school boys who said they were uncomfortable with a female student using the boys’ locker room. Their remarks were recorded by a girl who uses the boys’ locker room, as is her right under the schools system’s policy. The issue being investigated is whether the boys sexually harassed the girl.

From the report, I gather that the boys were talking among themselves, not directing their remarks at the girl. And, as you can well imagine, it’s contrary to Loudoun County policy to make video and audio recordings in school locker rooms.

Yet it’s the boys, not the girl, who are under investigation.

If the boys are under serious investigation, this further illustrates how the culture war waged by the woke left on behalf of various LGBTQ constituencies infringes on core First Amendment rights. We’ve seen how religious rights have been assaulted by demands, sometimes highly offensive ones, on wedding vendors. Now, in Loudoun Country, it’s the right to free expression that’s under attack. Fifteen-year-old boys are in the dock for saying they are uncomfortable with girls in their locker room.

It’s possible that there is less to this story than meets the eye. If someone files a Title IX complaint, even a frivolous one, it has to be processed. I hope all the school system will do here is determine that the boys were merely expressing their opinion and, at that point, dismiss the complain. (Even if the boys expressed their opinion to the girl, e.g., “I’m not comfortable with you being here,” the complaint still should be dismissed.) And because the remarks were recorded, the processing and investigating can be done very quickly.

But I don’t assume this is what will happen. The Loudoun County School system’s history suggests that it won’t.

First, there’s the fact that the school system allows students to use bathrooms and locker rooms based on the gender identity they choose. This policy, by itself, manifests insensitivity towards, and bias against, boys who don’t want to dress and undress in front of girls.

Beyond that, there’s the fact that last year, the newly elected Loudoun County School Board shut off cameras during public comment so the public could not see parents express their concerns to the school board about this policy. This shows lack of tolerance for dissenting views about the policy. Recall, too, the system’s harsh response to parent blowback against the policy after a boy who said he identified as a girl sexually assaulted a girl in a girl’s locker room.

I should note that the Loudoun County’s transgender locker and bathroom policies are under investigation by the Trump administration Department of Education to determine whether they violate Title IX. In addition, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares has weighed in on the side of the boys accused of harassment for expressing their opinion. However, he says there’s not much the state can do here because the Virginia Human Rights Act has a “carve out” for educational institutions like the Loudoun County schools.

One might have hoped that the board wouldn’t rely on this “carve out” to force teenage boys and girls to dress and undress in front of members of the opposite sex. More broadly, one might have hoped that the left, tired of being on the “20” side of 80-20 issues, would end, or at least pause, its campaign to push LGBTQ rights at the expense of First Amendment ones.

No such luck. The culture wars persist with the left mostly to blame, as I see it.