Judge: No civil right for girls-only bathrooms at schools

CHICAGO — A federal judge has shut down a teenage girl's bathroom access lawsuit against a a southwest suburban school district, saying the district didn't violate female students' civil rights by allowing biologically male transgender students to use the girls' bathrooms, locker rooms and other sex-segregated facilities when the young woman was a student at Bolingbrook High School.

U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman delivered the ruling on July 13 in Chicago federal court, agreeing to the request from the Valley View Community Unit School District 365U to dismiss the lawsuit lodged by the student, identified only as F.F., and her father, James Ellard Fisher.

The Valley View school district includes most of the communities of Bolingbrook and Romeoville in Chicago's southwest suburbs. It includes Bolingbrook High School and Romeoville High School, as well as the elementary and middle schools which feed into those schools.

The district serves more than 14,000 students.

In the ruling, Judge Coleman said states, like Illinois, are allowed to force school districts to let transgender students use the bathrooms and locker rooms of their choosing and girls do not have a civil right under federal law to use facilities that exclude biological males.

Authoritative legal precedent from previous decisions on such questions surrounding sex-separated facilities, the judge said, "shows that sex-segregated facilities are allowable, not required."

Rather, she asserted, federal Title IX civil rights laws demand equality in the quality of the facilities that are offered, meaning schools cannot offer higher quality facilities to one gender and not the other.

"Whether a school chooses to offer sex-segregated facilities is within the school's discretion, so long as the facilities are comparable across genders," Coleman wrote. "A violation would only occur if the facilities that were offered were not comparable..."

Coleman also said a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the court stated that the term "sex" under civil rights laws can "mean only 'biological sex'" doesn't change anything in this case, either.

In that case, known as West Virginia v B.P.J., the high court clarified the legal definition of "sex" in ruling that states can prohibit male students from participating in female sports.

In her new ruling, Coleman said that decision should only be read to apply to "the sports context," and should have no bearing on whether schools allow biologically male students into otherwise female-only spaces.

"... Even if the decision in B. P. J were applicable in this context, which it is not, it only holds that states may maintain separate sports teams based on biological gender, it does not hold that states are required to do so," Coleman wrote.

The decision comes as the latest step in the legal battle between the school district and the young woman and her father.

The lawsuit was filed in Chicago federal court in August 2025. The family is represented in the action by attorney Ajay Gupta, of Naperville.

In the lawsuit, F.F. and her father asserted the Valley View district had violated her civil rights under Title IX, as well as her constitutional rights to equal protection, by allowing biologically male students to use otherwise female-only segregated and sensitive spaces, such as bathrooms and locker rooms.

At the time the lawsuit was filed, F.F. was 17 years old and a student at Bolingbrook High School. According to court document, she is now 18 and is described as a former student of the high school.

According to the lawsuit, F.F. was allegedly confronted by a "transgender student, who she was familiar with" standing outside a bathroom stall F.F. had used in a facility labeled as a "girls bathroom." According to the lawsuit, the other student was "dressed in 'male-typical clothing ... with no visible indication of female identity.'"

According to her complaint, the experience left F.F. with "intense feelings of anxiety, discomfort and shame," as she realized the other student "could have seen her undergarments or her exposed body through small spaces on either side or under the stall door."

According to the complaint, F.F. told her father, who complained to school administrators about the incident and the policy.

In response, the school district allegedly offered F.F. the opportunity to use "single-use staff restrooms" at school and later allegedly "installed rubber strips and other opaque material on the toilet stalls in the girls' restrooms," allegedly to address privacy concerns.

However, in the months that followed, the school district rejected requests from F.F. and her father to alter its facility access policies.

Rather, the school district asserted it had no choice but to follow rules laid down by the Illinois Department of Human Rights, which requires schools to permit students "to access restrooms or bathrooms, locker rooms and changing rooms that align with their gender-related identity and without having to provide documentation or other proof of gender."

Further, the IDHR stated Illinois state law states "the discomfort or privacy concerns of other students, teachers, or parents are not valid reasons to deny or limit the full and equal use of facilities based on a student's gender-related identity."

Schools, however, "should" provide students "seeking more privacy" with "more private option upon their request, if possible," the Illinois state guidance said.

The school district ultimately also denied a formal Title IX complaint submitted by F.F. and her father, asserting F.F.'s "privacy concerns ... were 'purely speculative and not based on fact.'"

F.F. and her father then filed their lawsuit.

Coleman denied their request for a temporary restraining order in September 2025, as the judge indicated she believed the school district would ultimately prevail in the lawsuit.

After months of further proceedings, the judge ultimately made that prediction a reality, granting the school district's motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

The judge also denied F.F.'s request to continue her lawsuit anonymously, ruling that she will need to divulge her name, if the case is to continue.

However, it is not clear if the judge will allow the case to continue, without appeal. In a motion filed July 16, Gupta asked the judge to make clear if the case was dismissed with prejudice, which would mean the judge is denying the plaintiffs the opportunity to amend their lawsuit to address the shortcomings identified by the judge.

If the ruling is with prejudice, the plaintiffs would then be forced to appeal to the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals to continue their action.

Valley View School District has been represented by attorneys Darcy Proctor, John O'Driscoll and Alexander Myers, of the firm of Tressler LLP, of Chicago.