A Colorado family’s nightmare school trip has now become a federal case, and they are not alone.
According to a news release from the legal nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom, four families are suing Jefferson County Public Schools after learning their children were forced into overnight sleeping arrangements with students of the opposite sex without parental knowledge or consent.
For Joe and Serena Wailes, the breaking point came when their 11-year-old daughter was assigned to share a bed with a male student who identifies as female during a school-sponsored trip.
No parent should have to discover something like that after the fact. Yet that is exactly what happened on a recent outing.
The Wailes family is now joined by Bret and Susanne Roller and Rob and Jade Perlman, who say the district’s policies robbed them of their right to protect their children’s privacy and safety.
According to the ADF brief filed Wednesday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, officials at Jefferson County schools assign sleeping arrangements based on gender identity, not sex, while telling parents that boys and girls will be kept on separate floors.
The problem, ADF explained in a news release about the lawsuit, is that the district quietly redefines “boy” and “girl” to mean a student’s gender identity.
Parents are never informed of any of this nonsense.
The result is that families receive a false sense of security, while their children are placed in intimate overnight accommodations with students of the opposite sex.
In the Rollers’ case, they discovered after their young son’s trip that a female student had been assigned to his cabin and was monitoring his showers.
For the Perlmans, whose daughter previously experienced sexual harassment at a district middle school, the risk of her being roomed with a boy was already unacceptable.
The families are asking the court to halt the district’s policy, arguing that it violates parental rights, bodily privacy, and religious freedom.
ADF Senior Counsel Kate Anderson said the district’s refusal to offer sex-based accommodations contradicts its claim that it “freely grant[s] accommodations to all.”
Where is the sanity?
Teachers, administrators, and lawmakers are supposed to be looking out for children.
Instead, in one of Colorado’s most crowded districts, they concealed information parents needed to keep their children safe.
And it’s not just these families who have been failed.
The “trans” boy placed in a girl’s bed has also been failed by a system that treats identity confusion as an unquestionable truth, rather than a situation requiring a difficult conversation.
No little girl should ever be forced to share a bed with a strange boy — even if it hurts someone’s feelings.
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