Letter emphasizes all students' rights

Attorneys from the Thomas More Society and Alliance Defending Freedom sent a letter to the District 211 school board and Superintendent Daniel Cates articulating the rights of students and parents to privacy in sex-specific showers and changing areas and the rights of the school district to maintain policies keeping opposite-sex students, including transgender students, out of those areas.

The letter provides legal backing for the school to enact policies respecting the privacy of all students, specifically that:

• no federal law requires public schools to open sex-specific restrooms, showers, and changing areas to opposite-sex students

• providing such access violates the fundamental rights of the vast majority of students and parents, and

• schools have broad discretion to regulate the use of school restrooms, showers, and changing areas.

• forcing students to share bathrooms, showers and changing areas with opposite sex or transgender students threatens Arlington Heights District 211 with tort liability for violating students' and parents' rights.

The Obama administration's Office of Civil Rights has demanded that the school district reverse the policy, and open the way for mixed-sex showering and changing, as well as restroom necessities.

Thomas More Special Counsel Peter Breen stated: "Allowing students to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms would seriously endanger students' privacy and safety, undermine parental authority, violate religious students' free exercise rights, and severely impair an environment conducive to learning. These dangers are so clear-cut that a school district allowing such activity would clearly expose itself to tort liability."

The dangers are "clear cut" and now it's time for the parents and taxpayers of School District 211 to take action against a phony requirement that no federal law defends and is certain to be challenged in the courts.

Arlene Sawicki

South Barrington