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An affluent school district in a North San Diego County city is facing an administrative complaint for allegedly allowing middle school boys who identify as female to use the girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms.
The complaint was filed against Carlsbad Unified School District earlier this month by Defending Education. It alleges the district allows “male students to access female students’ intimate spaces.”
The 14-page complaint asks the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights to launch an investigation into the matter.
“Every girl deserves to feel safe in the locker room and on the field,” said Paul Runko, a spokesman for Defending Education, a conservative legal watchdog group.
“Protecting those rights is not only required by federal law, it is simply the right thing to do,” he told The College Fix.
Megan Arias, the district’s assistant superintendent of personnel services, said its officials were made aware of the complaint, but the district “has not received formal notice from [the Office for Civil Rights] regarding any such complaint or whether OCR intends to open an investigation.”
“Until the District is formally notified, we are not in a position to confirm any details,” she said via email this week, adding: “Carlsbad USD takes all civil rights obligations seriously, and is committed to a safe, inclusive environment for every student. Should OCR contact the District, we will cooperate fully with any inquiry.”
Carlsbad is an upper-middle class city that flanks the Pacific Ocean. Its average household income is $185,000 per year. Only 22 percent of CUSD students are labeled socioeconomically disadvantaged, and only 6 percent are English learners.
The complaint states that a parent, “Jane Doe,” has a child who attends Aviara Oaks Middle School, located in a well-to-do part of the city near high-end resorts just minutes from the beach.
Doe found out through another parent that the school had “allowed a male who self-identified as a female to enter the girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms,” the complaint alleges.
When Doe confronted the school’s physical education teachers about the issue, school staff affirmed that the school would “continue to give students access to otherwise sex-segregated spaces on the basis of their self-professed gender identity—following California state law rather than federal law,” the complaint states.
Defending Education stated in a news release: “Not only does CUSD permit males to enter female bathrooms and locker rooms, but its leadership, according to the parent, has stated it has no intention of following the Trump Administration’s interpretation of Title IX unless ordered by a court to do so.”
The complaint also flags the Jurupa Unified School District and the California Interscholastic Federation, the latter of which oversees the state’s sports programs, for allowing biological males to compete in women’s sports.
Doe’s daughter, who attends Sage Creek High School in Carlsbad, is a track and field athlete who was forced to compete against a transgender student at Jurupa Valley High School in May of this year.
“In fact, this was the second year that Doe’s daughter had to compete against AB,” states the complaint, likely referring to AB Hernandez, a prominent transgender high school track and field athlete who has won multiple state titles.
The complaint alleges that the school districts’ and CIF’s policies run afoul of Title IX as well as various executive orders related to sex discrimination in federally funded programs.
In its news release, Defending Education also pointed out the school districts and CIF “are prioritizing the desires of self-professed ‘transgender girls’ over the girls for whom Title IX itself was passed–a position even more spurious after the Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia v. B.P.J, and Little v. Hecox.”
In that June decision, the Supreme Court ruled that states may ban men from women’s sports.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the majority opinion that “[s]eparate sports teams for biological males and biological females are reasonable: Given the inherent physical differences between the sexes, allowing only biological females to play on women’s and girls’ teams can reduce the risk of physical injury and ensure fair competition.”
But California has yet to move the needle on this issue.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta told CalMatters that despite the Supreme Court ruling the state remains “committed to protecting transgender individuals from discrimination, securing safe, inclusive, welcoming school environments for all students.”
And California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office responded to the decision by telling Fox News Digital that the decision “does not affect California’s laws.”
“The state remains committed to ensuring every Californian, including the LGBTQ community, is met with dignity and respect.”
Asked to weigh in on the issue, Independent Women’s Forum’s senior legal counsel Beth Parlato told The College Fix that women’s sports exists “because sex matters, and equal opportunity requires preserving a female category in which women and girls have a fair chance to compete and succeed.”
She said Defending Education’s complaint puts “schools and athletic associations on notice that policies have consequences.”
“I expect continued federal enforcement and litigation to play an important role in determining whether Title IX’s promise of equal athletic opportunity is meaningful in practice,” she told The Fix.
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