Illinois mother files civil rights complaint, says daughter nearly forced to change in front of trans student
An Illinois mother has filed a civil rights complaint with the Justice Department after claiming that school administrators attempted to force her 13-year-old daughter to change in front of a transgender student in the girls locker room last month.
Nicole Georgas revealed the complaint during a Board of Education meeting for Deerfield Public Schools District 109 last week, claiming that the incident took place last month after her daughter refused to change into her uniform during physical education because a biological male student was present at the time.
"The girls want their locker rooms and bathrooms back. They want their privacy back. This is why I'm here tonight. My 13-year-old daughter's well-being, mental health, and privacy are at stake," Georgas said during her speech at the board meeting on Thursday.
According to Georgas, her daughter was "frightened" and "extremely upset" when on Feb. 5 she was using the girls bathroom and noticed that a transgender student was also using the facilities at the same time.
"She was told by the administration that a student can use the bathroom as well as a female locker room because they now identify as female," Georgas said of the explanation administrators allegedly provided to her daughter.
Georgas then raised the issue to the school's administration, noting to them that she believed it was a direct violation of President Donald Trump's "Keeping Men out of Women's Sports" executive order. She said in her speech that the administration informed her that, under the direction of their legal counsel, the student was free to use both the girls bathroom and the girls locker room.
Fox News Digital reached out to the school district for comment.
"That day, I filed a civil rights complaint, on behalf of my daughter, with the Department of Justice. It has now been referred to the Department of Education. A federal complaint has been filed with the district to protect the students."
Georgas said the situation worsened when, days later, her daughter and other classmates refused to change into her uniform during physical education because the transgender student was present.
She claimed that the following day, school administrators pulled the girls aside and later made them change into uniform.
"That day, [Assistant Superintendent for Student Services] Joanna Ford, [Assistant Principal] Cathy Van Treese, and multiple teachers all came into the girls locker room, making them change into uniform. This went on all week," she said, adding that her daughter still "refused to take part."
As part of Georgas' speech, she "demanded" the district move forward with designating facilities for biological males and biological females.
Georgas appeared on "America Reports" last week when she expressed her biggest concern regarding the situation.
"This sets such a dangerous precedent for girls everywhere by allowing men into safe places. My biggest concern is that an adult, biological male — that hasn't transitioned — can freely access women's bathrooms [and] locker rooms, putting their safety and privacy at risk. This is common sense."
Fox News Digital contacted the Justice Department and the Education Department for comment on the complaint.
Follow Fox News Digital's sports coverage on X, and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
E&E News
31 minutes ago
- E&E News
DOJ tells Trump he can wipe out national monuments
A key legal adviser to the White House said that President Donald Trump has the authority under existing federal law to abolish a pair of national monuments in California, as well as any others across the country created by prior presidents. Lanora Pettit, who helms the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), overturned a nearly 90-year-old precedent governing national monuments in a new legal opinion published Tuesday but dated May 27. The opinion, authored by Pettit, declares that the Antiquities Act of 1906 not only allows presidents to create national monuments from federal lands, but also says they can declare that existing monuments 'either never were or no longer are deserving of the Act's protections.' Advertisement Pettit said in her opinion that the White House asked the office to examine whether Trump could revoke former President Joe Biden's proclamations creating the Chuckwalla and Sáttítla Highlands national monuments in California. 'We think that the President can, and we should,' wrote Pettit in the opinion, which covers monuments broadly. There are more than 100 monuments established by prior presidents that have not been altered by Congress in some way, including converting the lands into national parks. Pettit also wrote that she was asked to review a 1938 opinion issued by then-Attorney General Homer Cummings to then-President Franklin Roosevelt, which has long guided interpretations of the Antiquities Act. In that opinion, Cummings determined that one president could not abolish a monument created by predecessors, ruling that because the designations are equivalent to an act of Congress, only lawmakers could abolish a monument. But Pettit criticized the 1938 ruling, writing that 'presidents have long been understood to have the power to come to a different factual decision regarding whether particular objects within a previously reserved monument merit protection.' 'For large parcels with multiple monuments (like Chuckwalla and Sáttítla Highlands), there is no principled distinction between determining that one object is not worth protecting or all of them — and, by operation of law, no reasoned distinction between reducing and eliminating the parcel,' she added. In addition to the two California sites, the Trump administration has been weighing reductions to four other monuments: Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah, Baaj Nwaavjo I'tah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon and the Ironwood Forest monuments in Arizona, and the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks monument in New Mexico. Justin Pidot, a law professor at the University of Arizona who previously worked at White House's Council on Environmental Quality, said the OLC opinion marks a 'radical shift' that could potential impact dozens of monuments now and into the future. 'This will go down as one of the most significant rollbacks in conservation in history,' Pidot said. Pettit's interpretation of the Antiquities Act would effectively reduce protections for monuments to just the length of a presidential term, he said. 'It means that national monuments exist only at the pleasure of the current president who is in power,' Pidot said. 'It protects the resources, but there's no permanence. 'That's a big difference from where we've been for more than 100 years where the president protects monuments and they stay unless Congress acts,' he added. But Margaret Byfield, executive director of American Stewards of Liberty, which advocates for private property rights, praised the change and views it as an avenue to roll back a monument process that critics argue have enshrined too much federal acreage. 'The legislative record shows Congress never authorized Presidents to use the Antiquities Act to protect millions of acres of land across America,' Byfield said. 'The new legal opinion from the Counsel to the President makes this clear and our hope is that President Trump will immediately begin eliminating, or at the very least, drastically shrink the massive National Monuments created by the Clinton, Bush, Obama and Biden administrations. These lands need to be opened back up to the people for recreation and productive uses.'
E&E News
31 minutes ago
- E&E News
Energy, enviro agencies eager to resume layoffs
Trump administration officials are anxious to resume sweeping layoffs inside energy and environmental agencies as they push the Supreme Court to green-light their plans. The administration's push for large-scale layoffs are on hold across much of the government due to a lower court's sweeping order. But the administration — arguing that it's being forced to keep 'large numbers of employees on the payroll without necessity' — is making a case to the Supreme Court that it ought to urgently intervene to allow those layoffs to proceed. The Trump administration on Tuesday submitted its latest plea to the Supreme Court, saying that the lower court's injunction has caused 'confusion and paralysis' within the executive branch and that agencies are being blocked 'from taking needed steps to make the federal government and workforce more efficient.' Advertisement The Justice Department previously told the Supreme Court in its June 2 request that 40 reductions in force in 17 agencies had been paused by the court. The layoffs put on hold by the court include staff reductions expected at EPA and the Interior and Energy departments.
New York Times
an hour ago
- New York Times
Justice Dept. Seeks to Pause Ruling Ordering Due Process for Deported Venezuelans
The Trump administration on Tuesday asked a federal appeals court to block a lower court's order directing the Trump administration to provide due process to scores of Venezuelan immigrants who were deported without hearings to El Salvador in March under a wartime law. The emergency request by the Justice Department, filed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, came one day before the administration was supposed to send the lower court judge its proposal for how to allow nearly 140 of the deported Venezuelans to challenge their expulsion. The men, accused of being members of a violent street gang called Tren de Aragua, are being held in a maximum-security Salvadoran prison. The White House deported the men on March 15 on a series of flights, using a powerful 18th-century statute known as the Alien Enemies Act. That law, which has been used on only three occasions in U.S. history, is meant to be used in times of declared war or during an invasion by a foreign nation. The fight over the Venezuelans is merely one of the many bitter battles that have pitted courts across the country against an administration that is aggressively seeking to deport as many as immigrants as possible through methods that have repeatedly strained the boundaries of the law. Time and again, judges have settled on a similar bottom line, saying that the immigrants must be afforded basic due process rights before being expelled from the country. The proceeding in front of Judge James E. Boasberg, the chief judge in Federal District Court in Washington, was one of the first deportation cases to reach the courts and remains one of the hardest fought. The judge tried to stop the deportation flights carrying the Venezuelans shortly after they took off, but the administration went ahead anyway, prompting him to threaten Trump officials with contempt proceedings. Ever since the men landed in El Salvador, their lawyers have been seeking another order to bring them back to the United States. And last week, Judge Boasberg gave them some of what they wanted, directing Trump officials in an outraged decision to give the men the due process they were denied, but leaving it up to the administration to offer an initial plan about how to carry out his instructions. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
