Worried parents have sued the Ohio Bethel City School District over its policy of allowing transgender children to use the locker rooms and toilets that correspond with their gender identification rather than their biological sex. The lawsuit states that this restricts some children’s access to the school’s facilities.
Many Christian and Muslim parents have raised concerns that the program is violating their constitutional and legal rights.
The Supreme Court has regularly upheld parents’ rights to make choices about their children’s health care, religious upbringing, and formal schooling. According to the lawsuit, the Board “refuses to answer important questions parents need to know” and “keeps the community in the dark” with its judgments. The Board’s decisions violate parents’ constitutionally protected right to informed consent.
The new transgender restroom policy allegedly caused “anxiety and emotional suffering” to other kids not mentioned in the case. When men try to “violate her modesty,” one woman always follows her closest friend to the lavatory.
When feasible, the children of the mentioned Plaintiffs in Paragraph 66 should refrain from utilizing the school restrooms. Because of the school’s regulations, students at Bethel experience fear and emotional discomfort whenever they need to use the toilet. The shame they experience at the prospect of being observed by the other sex further undermines their sense of privacy. As an illustration, consider the case of Child 3B, who suffers from worry and mental anguish because she cannot control her body’s need to urinate. If Child No. 3B feels unsafe, she may feel more comfortable going out with a male companion who can keep an eye out for any creepy advances.
A member of the faculty was quoted as saying things like, “It’s not fair for transgender students to have to use a private restroom away from the main restrooms and that it’s not fair for a student who identifies as female not to use the girls’ restroom just because they were born a man,” before the implementation of the new policy. Some in favor of the new regulation have pointed to Bethel’s reputation as a “very conservative neighborhood” as another justification for it. According to the complaint, the policy change came as a “blindside” to the parents.
The statement provided proof “there was no public debate, deliberation, or vote of any type related to intimate facility usage being based on gender identity instead of biological sex.”
The complaint claims that after the legislation was enacted, two Muslim parents offered to foot the bill to construct a gender-neutral toilet adjacent to the current ones.
The complaint claims, “Bethel accepted the donors’ funds and built the bathroom but proceeded in its original route without alerting the donors.”
A complaint was made by parents who are upset that their children, as young as fifth grade, are being urged to participate in events that support the LGBTQ+ community. In the beginning, this behavior surprised the parents.
Moreover, “the American people have grown up in circumstances that have surely safeguarded pupils’ privacy in personal areas, segregated by biological sex,” he said. Here we are in 2022, a society that routinely subjects children all around the country to pseudoscientific sociological experiments that would have been laughed at just a decade before.
By stating, “Boys are boys, girls are girls, and every student has the right to privacy in personal circumstances,” Hamilton alluded to the fact that all student generations before their own had been afforded the same freedom.