Did Loudoun County Public Schools Try to Cover Up Another Transgender Bathroom Scandal? America First Legal Demands Answers

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—America First Legal is demanding information amid claims that Loudoun County Public Schools hid from parents key safety concerns about a student, who identifies as transgender, filming boys without their pants and underwear in high school bathrooms.

“By all reports, there are over forty victims over the course of three years. It strains credulity to believe that LCPS is only now learning of this and, given how committed that school system is to elevating the rights of ‘transgender’ students over everyone else, LCPS could be facing the mother of all Title IX lawsuits,” Ian Prior, a Loudoun County father and senior counsel at America First Legal, told The Daily Signal in a statement Wednesday.

America First Legal filed a Freedom of Information Act request, demanding the school district reveal “what they knew and when they knew it” about the alleged activity at Freedom High School, Prior added.

The FOIA request, first obtained by The Daily Signal, seeks “all records of complaints presented to teachers or administrators at Freedom High School by students at the school that allege they were photographed or filmed in bathrooms at the school,” all records about “investigations into students filming or photographing other students in the bathrooms,” and all records with the terms “bathroom” and “photographed” or “recorded” or “filmed.”

The Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office confirmed to The Daily Signal that it had opened an investigation into the bathroom filming claims, though it would not identify the number of alleged victims or the suspect. The school district also told The Daily Signal it is working with the sheriff’s office on an investigation.

“We urge anyone with information about the incidents or who may be a victim to contact the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office,” Thomas Julia, director of media relations at the sheriff’s office, told The Daily Signal.

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Sources told 7News reporter Nick Minock that the student has been using a phone to record naked boys underneath bathroom stalls for three years, targeting more than 40 victims, and that school administrators have known about the situation for longer than the school has admitted.

LCPS Weighs In

“Loudoun County Public Schools is actively working with the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office regarding an ongoing investigation involving allegations that a student secretly recorded other individuals inside Freedom High School without their knowledge or permission,” Dan Adams, a public information officer at LCPS, told The Daily Signal in a statement Wednesday.

Adams added that LCPS takes the allegations “extremely seriously” and is “committed to transparency and will continue to provide accurate information to the community while working within the applicable legal parameters concerning the privacy rights of students and staff.”

“LCPS has been working in partnership with law enforcement regarding the investigation, including providing the Freedom High School community with a level of information that notifies families of this matter, while also ensuring the integrity of the investigative process is not compromised,” he said.

The school district “can also confirm that there are no reports that students involved in these incidents were in a restroom inconsistent with their biological sex.”

Prior told The Daily Signal that the student who allegedly filmed the boys is a boy who identifies as a girl.

The Transgender Bathroom Policy

Loudoun County has been the epicenter of the debate over transgender policies in schools since 2021.

That year, LCPS adopted Policy 8040, which states that the school district “shall allow gender-expansive or transgender students to use their chosen name and gender pronouns that reflect their consistently asserted gender identity without any substantiating evidence.” The policy allows boys to compete in girls sports and to access girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms if the boys claim to identify as girls.

After complaints about a 15-year-old male student forcing a girl to commit sex acts at Stone Bridge High School in May 2021 and assaulting another girl in the girls’ restroom at Broad Run High School in October of that year, parents voiced outrage at school board meetings.

Then-LCPS Superintendent Scott Ziegler declared, “The predator transgender student or person simply does not exist.”

Yet the Loudoun County Juvenile Court went on to find the perpetrator “not innocent” of charges of forcible sodomy and forcible fellatio. The student also pleaded “no contest” to charges of abduction and sexual battery for the Broad Run incident.

The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights found that Policy 8040 discriminates against women and girls.

Last year, LCPS launched a Title IX investigation into three boys who expressed surprise when they saw a girl in their locker room. The school initially dropped the case against one boy, who is Muslim, and ultimately settled with the other two boys in February of this year.

“LCPS’s Policy 8040 puts student privacy and safety at risk,” Victoria Cobb, president of The Family Foundation, told The Daily Signal in a statement Wednesday. “Moreover, Loudoun County’s track record proves its board and administration inadequately protect the innocent and punish bad actors. It’s past time for the Department of Education and Department of Justice to intervene before more students are harmed.”

Neither the Justice Department nor the Department of Education responded to The Daily Signal’s requests for comment by publication time.

Scott Smith, the father of one of the victims of the 2021 bathroom incidents, told The Daily Signal that he is “not surprised” by the allegations.

“Nothing has changed for the better at LCPS,” he said.