You missed the fact that school officials deceived this young girl and her parents, promising them that boys and girls would sleep on separate floors. It wasn’t until this 11-year-old girl was on the trip—far from home—that she discovered her expected bedmate was a boy.

 

She was then forced to stand up against school authorities and defend her own privacy in the moment, late at night. They initially treated her as if her concerns were not legitimate, moving her to a different bed in the room. This backfired when the other roommates wanted the boy to move beds too. So this little girl had to muster the courage to voice her concerns a second time. The school finally relented and moved her to another room, but told her to lie about the reason why.

 

Any reasonable person can see how outrageous this is. No child should have to defend her own privacy against a school policy that puts her in jeopardy. And no school district should make it a policy to deceive parents.

 

Furthermore: not all kids have the ability or opportunity to stand up for themselves. Another family in our lawsuit has a son whose sleeping arrangements and showers were supervised by a female (identifying as non-binary) at a week-long school camp. Several of the boys were so uncomfortable that they skipped showers and changed their clothes inside their sleeping bags.

 

This is inexcusable. It is adults’ responsibility to stand up for children—not children’s responsibility to stand up for themselves.

 

This could easily be avoided with a commonsense policy that allows parents to stay informed and opt their children out of mixed-sex sleeping arrangements ahead of time—protecting the privacy of ALL children involved. But despite our requests, the school district repeatedly refused to do this.

 

So yes, we sued. In fact, let me put every district in America on notice right now: if you treat students and parents this way, prepare for a lawsuit.