Dozens of Elida High School students reportedly walked out on Monday to protest the school’s policy allowing transgender students to choose restrooms by preference rather than biology.
The Lima News explained that students protesting the school’s restroom policy is the latest in a series of similar activism throughout the community. "Parents and community members have protested for months in hopes that the school board would rescind the policy, which critics say violates the privacy of female students who are uncomfortable sharing a restroom with members of the opposite sex," reporter Mackenzi Klemann wrote.
"We’re upset about biological boys in the girls’ bathroom," said a freshman student who was among the first to walk out in the protest. "The school board hasn’t been listening."
Klemann noted that the school allowing transgender students to choose a restroom is "part of the school district’s anti-discrimination policy, which permits transgender and non-binary students to use the restroom of their preferred gender identity on a case-by-case basis."
The reporter summarized that Board President Brenda Stocker reportedly claimed that this policy keeps their school’s districts in "compliance with federal case law, established by the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals" and that "violating case law puts the district at risk of a lawsuit ‘that we would certainly lose,’ she said during a candidate forum in October."
The board has also claimed that compliance with anti-discrimination laws is essential in order to maintain the flow of federal funding.
The subject has been a central topic amid the school board election as new candidates proposed to overturn the current policy.
"We can have a lawsuit from a transgender student or we can have lawsuits from Christian parents who have had enough of their child having to hold their bowels and not go to the restroom because they’re afraid of what they’re going to see," newcomer candidate to the board Jeff Point told The Lima News last month.
Klemann summarized that the board has previously declared it a "fiscal responsibility to the district not to put themselves in a position where they would face a lawsuit they would lose and calling on citizens to petition state and federal lawmakers to amend the law to prohibit transgender student access to restrooms that do not conform to their preferred identity."
The local board just went through an election on Tuesday, where newcomer candidates argued a more sensible policy would be for students to use restrooms that correlate to their biological sex, and those who are not comfortable doing so could use a family restroom.
One of them argued a different interpretation of anti-discrimination law.
"We don't feel that that's discriminating against sex," David Peters said. "There's two sexes: male and female. As long as you're letting male (students) go in the male restroom and female (students) go in the female restrooms, you're not discriminating against biological sex. That's what the law states."
Fox News Digital reached out to Board President Brenda Stocker and Superintendent Joel Mengerink, neither of whom immediately responded to comment.
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