Families and MAGA-world outraged after school district suspends boys for bullying transgender student

Independent

2 hours ago

Parents, MAGA-world and the Virginia Attorney General are fuming after two students were suspended after they said they were 'uncomfortable' with a transgender student in the boys' locker room.
The boys were suspended for ten days from Stone Bridge High School after a student, who was born female but identifies as a boy, filmed the boys expressing discomfort when he entered the boys' locker room, 7News first reported. The incident occurred in March, but the video was made public in May.
The school district — Loudoun County Public Schools — launched a Title IX investigation, finding the boys responsible for sexual harassment and sex-based discrimination, a lawyer representing them told the outlet.
'There's a girl in here?' one boy asks in the video, prompting another to chime in: 'Why is there a girl? I'm so uncomfortable there is a girl.' A boy then insists the student leave.
Parents and state officials alike are outraged over the suspension and spoke to the press about their concerns.
Virginia Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears attended the news conference and told the crowd: 'It is time for the insanity to stop. It is time for everyone to recognize what is settled truth: girls are girls and boys are boys.'
Parents of the suspended students have seethed at the investigation and subsequent suspensions.
"I would say the first reaction was some anger, because we're just really concerned with all this stuff," Seth Wolfe, one of the parents, told 7News this week. He added he was "saddened by the decision-making process and how that went."
Renae Smith, another parent, similarly said she was "absolutely floored that they came back and branded my son responsible for sexual harassment and sex based discrimination with no solid evidence whatsoever." The parent told the outlet: "We're talking about scarring him for life by a biased process that's supposed to protect fairness, but it's shocking. It's wrong, and it should terrify every single parent."
Both parents voiced their concerns about the school district's contentious Policy 8040: Rights of Transgender and Gender-Expansive Students, which the school board approved in 2021. The policy addresses locker rooms, stating: "Students should be allowed to use the facility that corresponds to their consistently asserted gender identity."
A spokesperson for the school district told The Independent in a statement that it does not publicly discuss private student matters, but noted: "At no time would LCPS suspend a student simply because they expressed some kind of discomfort. A reading of our Title IX resources should make it clear that there is a high bar to launch a Title IX investigation and an even higher bar to determine a student is in violation of Title IX."
State and federal officials have joined Republican commentators in denouncing the school district's move.
"This is very wrong — and it WILL NOT STAND !" Harmeet Dhillon, the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice, wrote on her personal X account Monday.
Attorney and conservative commentator Marina Medvin similarly bashed: "Virginia: Loudoun County Public School punished two boys for voicing their discomfort with having a girl use the boys' locker room and video record them on her phone, suspending them at the start of the new school year."
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares told Fox5 in June that he referred the school district to federal authorities.
"What we have found is Loudoun County Public Schools have both bad policy and bad judgment," he said. Miyares said the school improperly targeted the boys not for misconduct, but for wanting the student to leave the locker room because they felt uncomfortable.
"This would have never been even debatable 15 years ago. If I had told you we'd be even having this discussion, you would have thought it was from another planet,' he continued. 'Right now these three boys, just for voicing common sense, are now the victim of the full-weight, possible expulsion, just because they voiced their concerns."
The majority of the two-minute video shows a black screen, as the phone is seemingly in the transgender student's pocket. The student then points the camera at the boys, who are fully clothed, for the last 20 seconds after they express their discomfort.
The Loudoun County Sheriff's Office was considering charges against the student who filmed the boys. Since the boys in the video 'were not in a state of undress or in any other situation that would've been an explicit violation of law, there was no potential charge,' a sheriff's office spokesperson told The Independent.
Virginia state Delegate Terry Kilgore, a Republican, also bashed the school district's decision.
"Calling a biological girl a girl isn't harassment. Neither is speaking up when a girl walks into the boys' locker room,' he said in a statement Wednesday. "Yet the far-left leadership of Loudoun County Public Schools tried to brand these three young men as harassers — and suspend them for 10 days - for doing exactly that. That's not just wrong, It's an injustice committed in the name of radical ideology.'