Blaze News investigates: 'Where the fight is' — Virginia teen refuses to compromise her faith for gender ideology; takes school district to court

Virginia has fielded various battles in recent years over parental rights and radical gender ideology in the classroom. While those supportive of the former and antipathetic to the latter appear to have gained some ground in the swing state since the time of Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s 2021 win, it’s abundantly clear that this remains an undecided war.

While historically a fight between adults at kids' expense, a brave teen in Northern Virginia who found herself caught up in Fairfax County Public Schools’ leftist counteroffensive has stepped into the breach.

The high school senior, referred to as Jane Doe in court documents, is suing the Fairfax County School Board with the help of the America First Legal Foundation, alleging she has been compelled "to speak in a manner that violates her sincerely held philosophical and religious beliefs" and has been discriminated against on the basis of both her beliefs and her sex.

This young Christian woman has apparently refused to consent to the invasion of girls' bathrooms and locker rooms by transvestites and other opportunistic males seeking accommodation over their so-called gender identity. She has also refused to call "students who identify as gender-expansive or transgender ... by their chosen name and pronoun, regardless of the name and gender recorded in the student’s permanent pupil record."

The lawsuit, filed in the Circuit Court of Fairfax County, seeks an admission on the part of the FCSB that its rules have violated the teen's right to free expression, free exercise, and due process under the Virginia Constitution along with her right to be free from government discrimination on the basis of religion and sex. Additionally, Doe seeks an injunction along with a declaratory judgment that the district's gender ideology policy is incompatible with the guarantees of freedom provided by the Constitution and Code of Virginia.

Ian Prior, senior legal advisor with America First Legal, said in a statement, "Fairfax County Public Schools appears to believe that its policies and regulations can override the Virginia Constitution’s protections for religious beliefs, speech, and from government discrimination on the basis of sex and religious beliefs."

'Where the fight is'

Even though the Biden administration is poised to foist gender ideology on schools nationwide via its final Title IX regulations, some parental rights advocates are convinced that a win in this case would nevertheless be significant.

Alvin Lui, the president and cofounder of the parental rights advocacy group Courage Is a Habit, told Blaze News that Doe’s defiance and litigation is "where the fight is."

"When you have a lawsuit like with this young lady, this one young lady who presumably had the backing of her parents and her family — this is where the fight is," said Lui. "This lawsuit is hugely important because it reminds people not to wait for people to come. ... This is the pushback people need."

"If this goes her way, every parent group — and you can be sure that Courage Is a Habit will absolutely take advantage of this — every parent group out there from Moms for Liberty to Moms for America to all the other smaller groups should take that and distribute that to the local school districts and have their children push back ... because now a precedent has been set," added Lui, who has been working to protect American children in various states including Maine.

Victoria Cobb, president of the Family Foundation of Virginia, told Blaze News, "I'm proud of the student for standing up and saying that 'I am being compelled to do things and say things that I don’t believe.'"

"The idea that a student would have to sign away what they believe to attend public school is un-American," continued Cobb, whose faith-based organization has been fighting to ensure Virginians can freely live out their faith in the public square.

Cobb added that the requirement a student would have to surrender his or her "First Amendment rights to attend school is legally abhorrent. I think the [FCPS] will find themselves struggling on the back end of this lawsuit."

Should the Christian teen fail in her civil rights lawsuit, she will have at least demonstrated the cost of a clear conscience in Fairfax County.

Background

Virginians elected Gov. Youngkin in November 2021 largely due to his stances on parental rights and education. Given a mandate to take decisive action in these areas, Youngkin’s administration has taken steps to roll back some of the previous government’s radical policies.

However, various local public school districts, including the largest public school system in the state, have resisted the democratic will of the people, recommitting to rules that systematically advance gender ideology — apparently at the expense of some students’ safety and First Amendment rights.

In July 2023, the Virginia Department of Education released its final Model Policies for the Treatment of Transgender Students in Virginia’s Public Schools, highlighting that the previous model policies under former Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam not only "promoted a specific viewpoint aimed at achieving cultural and social transformation in schools" but had "also disregarded the rights of parents and ignored other legal and constitutional principles that significantly impact how schools educate students."

The Youngkin administration ultimately tossed out the Northam model policies and instead emphasized parents’ rights "to make decisions with respect to their children."

In addition to making sure parents could not be left in the dark about their kids' possible manifestations of gender dysphoria at school, the final policies required schools to: use students' real names; refer to students with the pronouns in accordance with the sex indicated on their official record unless given a formal written request by parents; and require that students use sex-segregated school facilities that correspond with their biological sex.

Where federal law requires transvestites to share in otherwise sex-segregated facilities with students of the opposite sex, the new guidelines allow for parents to opt their kids out of using such facilities and to have them provided with alternatives.

Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares confirmed in October that the model polices curbing gender ideology and keeping students’ sports and bathrooms sex-segregated were both legitimate and constitutional.

Ideology-affirming care

Apparently keen to let students transition behind parents’ backs and to allow transvestites to use facilities designated for members of the opposite sex, numerous local public school districts rejected the new model policies, including Fairfax County Public Schools.

In the face of such leftist rebellion, Youngkin underscored that his model polices were "the law and they don’t have a choice."

Evidently, FCPS superintendent Michelle Reid figured she and her underlings were above the law, noting in an update last year that FCPS was doubling down on its radical policies and would continue to:

• address students "by their chosen names and pronouns";
• provide gender-confused students "with access to facilities, activities, and/or trips consistent with their gender identity"; and
• keep students' "gender expansive or transgender status" under wraps.

According to Jane Doe's lawsuit, these policies, outlined in FCPS' Regulation 2603.2 concerning "Gender-expansive and Transgender Students," have been used to run roughshod over her constitutional rights.

Jane Doe’s complaint notes that Regulation 2603.2 "purports to apply equally to all students" but effectively "elevates the interests of 'gender-expansive' and 'transgender' students at the expense of all others."

The lawsuit suggests, for instance, that by enabling those anatomically correct males claiming misalignment between their sex and gender to use girls' lavatories or locker rooms, "The Regulation puts the burden of accommodation on biological females who want to use the appropriate restroom or locker room."

Besides ceding women’s spaces to gender ideologues, the lawsuit suggests further that the policy also surrenders linguistic territory on behalf of staff and students, tying Regulation 2603.2 to nondiscrimination and harassment policies, such as Regulation 4952.5, which forbids "gender-based harassment."

Harassment of this kind includes "gendered name calling, gendered remarks that are derogatory in nature — intending to demean or humiliate, and harassment based on sexual orientation and gender identity/expression."

Jane Doe and other students whose deeply held beliefs are at odds with the ideology coded into school policy do not simply have to deal with the fallout. They apparently have to sign off on it.

Values test

Fairfax County Public Schools require students and parents to sign a student rights and responsibilities form (SRR) that states students have a right to "access restroom and locker room facilities and other non-stigmatizing accommodations that are consistent with the student’s gender identity" as well as to be called by chosen names and pronouns.

The SRR indicates further that students are required to "respect others' beliefs and differences" and "refrain from using words, images, or gestures that are obscene, violent, disruptive, or disrespectful."

The same document suggests that referring to a "transgender" student by their actual sex or legal name could qualify as "discriminatory harassment."

Failure to indulge a student's "gender identity" could land FCPS students various punishments, including weekend detentions, suspensions, and "behavioral instruction."

Lui of Courage Is a Habit suggested that schools are the primary vehicle for what he calls the "transgender cult." Regulation 2603.2 and similar policies are ostensibly a means of codifying cultist beliefs and curbing dissent.

"The majority of kids need to go to public schools. And so they spend the seven hours a day, five days a week, 13 years in the system, and that's where all this transgender ideology comes from," Lui told Blaze News. "There's a lot of young ladies like [Doe] in K through 12 that think like her, but they're bullied into silence — not only by fellow students but by the administration itself."

"Kids already have a hard enough time, you know, with peer pressure and things like that. Now, you've got counselors and teachers and principals and our entire culture saying, 'If you don't [use] my pronouns, there's going to be consequences. There's going to be punishments,'" added Lui.

Signing off on the problem

Doe, a senior at a FCPS high school, is a devout Roman Catholic "who strives to live in accordance with her faith daily" and "has sincerely held beliefs that govern her views, sincerely held beliefs about human nature, marriage, gender, sexuality, morality, politics, ethics, natural law, and social issues."

The suit notes that Doe "believes that referring to another person using pronouns that do not correspond with biological sex is harmful to herself because it forces her to lie." Furthermore, it indicates she believes on the basis of scientific evidence that gender ideology is more or less bogus.

At the beginning of this school year, Doe received the latest version of the SRR. Whereas in past years, parents would have to sign and acknowledge receipt of the SRR, now students must apparently watch a video, then take a test regarding the student rights they are to affirm and the corresponding responsibilities they are to assume.

"Signature and acceptance of the SR&R, a requirement of each student, was predicated on a student answering 70 percent of the questions 'correctly,'" says the complaint. "FCPS staff did not clearly explain to students that passing the test would result in the signature and acceptance of the SR&R."

Controversial elements of the SRR that are at odds with Doe's religious and philosophical beliefs made it into the video she had to watch and into the test she was expected to complete and sign.

Doe refused to take the test. This prickled her teacher who allegedly gave her written instruction to complete the test. Doe’s continued refusal reportedly prompted more urging by her teacher, both in person and over email.

In September, Doe was allegedly carted out of the cafeteria with other dissenting students to take the SRR test under supervision. Again, she apparently told the administrators to pound sand.

The next month, Doe's mother got involved, allegedly telling the school's principal Doe would not be taking the test as it "constituted 'compelled speech' on 'gender identity,' among other topics, which were contrary to their religious beliefs and family values."

Apparently, the FCPS was unwilling to give the student's mother the final word. Another employee reportedly told Doe's mom there was no opt-out for the SRR and that she would have to sign. She too refused, according to the complaint.

Extra to the pressure around the SRR sign-off, Doe has allegedly faced immense social pressure from educators over pronoun use and has had to share female spaces with males.

"It is well past time for FCPS to stop sacrificing the constitutional rights of its students so that it can implement a state-sanctioned ideology that demands compliance in speech, beliefs, and conduct," said Ian Prior of America First Legal. "Unfortunately, FCPS has repeatedly demonstrated that it will not voluntarily comply with the Virginia constitution and the Virginia Supreme Court’s rulings, so it will be up to students and parents to enforce their rights through the courts. We are proud to help them do just that."

In response to questions about the case and its particulars, a FCPS spokesman said in a statement to Blaze News, "Our current Fairfax County Public School (FCPS) policies are consistent with federal and state anti-discrimination laws."

"FCPS remains committed to fostering a safe, supportive, welcoming, and inclusive school environment for all students and staff," continued the statement. "Any student who has a need or desire for increased privacy in using a bathroom or locker room, regardless of the underlying reason, is provided with reasonable accommodations, including access to single user facilities."

Neither FCSB chairman Karl Frish nor FCPS superintendent Reid individually responded to requests for comment.

The governor's office did not provide comment by deadline.

Parental engagement

Both Cobb and Lui stressed that extra to taking legal action, parents need to remain engaged with regard to what's going on at their kids' schools.

"I think that parents need to demand the utmost transparency from their school boards and from their superintendents because many parents are simply unaware of the policies within their schools, and that’s intentional in some cases," said Cobb.

"It is a county-by-county battle because some counties have resisted now the good guidelines so, unfortunately, parents now have to be very wary of where they live and who they have in local school board office," continued Cobb. "Who is governing over the day-to-day experience of their child in that school? Because there are in fact still many school districts that have biological boys going into girls' bathrooms, biological boys playing on girls' sports teams, that have compelled speech."

Cobb referenced the Family Foundation’s "Protect Every Kid" initiative, which provides parents with Youngkin's updated parent-friendly model policies and what they need to put pressure on their respective school board members to ensure their schools are in alignment.

Lui, whose organization provides parents with various tools for fighting back against indoctrination in schools, stressed the importance of avoiding complacency in the wake of the occasional win. He cited as an example the mistaken sense that Gov. Youngkin’s election meant the war in the commonwealth was over.

"Once he got in, there was a sense of, 'We won. Yay. We can all go back now to our lives. Youngkin's got it.' And it's that outsourcing of parental responsibility that got us here in the first place," said Lui. "This was a good showing, but that doesn't solve anything."

Doe and other students are stuck dealing with symptoms of a broader problem that needs to be addressed, according to Lui. While Doe winning her lawsuit would be significant, Lui stressed that the social contagion must ultimately be dealt with at its source.

The parental rights advocate has his sights set on the "social-emotional learning" method and its champions at the American School Counselor Association, which he figures has been sneaking gender ideology into schools, in part through "language contamination."

"They use your vocabulary but not your dictionary. That's something that parents really need to understand is at the root of all of this: language contamination," said Lui. "Parents have stayed silent because they believe they're just teaching their kids empathy, but what they mean is that they're teaching the girls that when they see a boy in the bathroom, they need to quiet their own fears and needs and they need to empathize with the boy. They need to give empathy to the mentally ill man that walks into the bathroom. ... That [empathy] only goes one way."

Having students consent to the ideological takeover as Doe and others have apparently been asked to do is just an escalation in the culture war — "it's just the next level."

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