A self-styled civil rights organization has once again filed a lawsuit against Hanover County Schools, this time over the Hanover County School Board’s (HCSB) choice to hire the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) to review its equality initiatives.
“We have filed a lawsuit. We’ve submitted a FOIA request in hopes of better understanding the nature of the relationship between ADF and the Hanover County School Board,” Communications Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia (ACLUVA) Edith Bullard told The Virginia Star.
“Communications between the board and ADF after they’ve formally entered into an attorney/client relationship might potentially be privileged (depending on the nature of their relationship),” she said. “However, communications between ADF and the board on issues that predate an attorney/client relationship, including communications reaching out for the engagement do not have the same privileges.”
The ACLUVA is joined in the lawsuit by Equality Virginia, He She Ze and We, the Hanover County NAACP, and Side by Side Virginia, according to a press release.
The battle is mainly focused on the issue of transgender bathrooms. The ACLUVA argues that under the school district’s Equal Educational Opportunities policy, biological boys should be allowed to use the girls’ restroom, and vice-versa. Anything less, it says, is discrimination.
That policy says the following:
The Hanover County Public Schools’ educational programs and services are designed to meet the varying needs of all students and do not discriminate against any individual for reasons of race, religion, color, national origin, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, ethnicity, ancestry, marital or parental status, or on any other basis prohibited by law.
The ACLUVA is already suing the school district over its failure to adopt transgender bathroom policies. That litigation is ongoing.
Citing the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), far-left news outlet Media Matters and a website called pro-lies.org, Bullard said there “are concerned with the extremist views taken by ADF.”
The ADF declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation.
That nonprofit, which advocates for Christian, conservative values, has often been maligned by the political left as a “hate group.”
Transgender bathrooms have been a hot topic in Virginia.
During the summer, details emerged of a rape coverup in a Loudoun County high school bathroom.
That rape was committed by a boy in a skirt, who identified as female and was using the girl’s bathroom. The boy was then transferred to another public school where he committed a second sex crime.
Superintendent Scott Ziegler failed to report the rapes to parents, and simultaneously claimed the school district had never had a problem with transgender bathrooms while covering for the rapist.
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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Ohio Star and The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Hanover Public Schools” by Hanover Public Schools.
[…] policy comes after months of sparring between the board, counseled by conservative organization the Alliance Defending Freedom, and transgender advocates including the ACLUVA. Although there […]