Virginia Beach parents sue to get Youngkin’s transgender policy put into place

Two Virginia Beach parents are suing their local school district over its refusal to adopt Republican Gov. Glen Youngkin’s new model policies for the treatment of transgender students.

A lawsuit filed this week alleges the Virginia Beach School Board, which narrowly voted down a proposal to adopt the Youngkin administration’s policies at a meeting last month, “has ignored the rights of Virginia parents to make basic decisions about the education and wellbeing of their children.”

Youngkin’s model policies, which were introduced last September and finalized last month, allow teachers and students to misgender a transgender student by using the name and pronouns associated with their sex assigned at birth, rather than their gender identity.

They also prohibit public school teachers from referring to a student using a different name or pronoun without written permission from the student’s parent and prevent transgender students from participating in school sports teams that match their gender identity.

Local school boards are responsible for adopting the framework in ways “that are consistent with but may be more comprehensive than the model policies,” according to guidance supplied to schools by the state Department of Education. While some school boards with conservative majorities have voted to adopt the administration’s policies, more liberal districts have rejected them.

Fairfax County Public Schools, the largest district in Virginia, in August announced it would not adopt the policies, claiming its existing policies “are consistent with federal and state anti-discrimination laws as required by the new model policies.” 

The model policies have also drawn backlash from students, who organized walkouts across the state last year in protest. In Virginia Beach, high school students have attended every school board meeting this year to plead with board members not to adopt the policies, The Washington Post reported.

It is still unclear how the implementation of the policies will be enforced. Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, a Republican, in August issued an opinion at Youngkin’s request that stated school boards “are required to adopt policies that are consistent” with the new model ones.

“These policies are fully compliant with the law, and school boards across the Commonwealth should support and implement them,” Miyares wrote. “It’s not just common sense, it’s the law.”

The lawsuit, filed Monday in Virginia Beach Circuit Court, argues that the local school board’s failure to adopt the Youngkin administration’s model policies is unlawful and asks for an injunction that requires the board to adopt them. The plaintiffs are also asking for a declaration that school boards across the state must adopt regulations consistent with the model policies.

The parent plaintiffs, the lawsuit argues, “want to protect their children from being compelled to use biologically inaccurate names and pronouns, forced to use bathrooms and locker rooms with members of the opposite sex, or required to pretend during athletic competition that gender identity can override the enduring physical differences between boys and girls.”