Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, a Republican, issued a statement this week slamming a preliminary injunction to allow a transgender school student to use a bathroom and participate on a school sports team that aligns with their “gender identity” instead of their biological sex.
According to a press release from Rokita’s office, a 13-year-old biological female student at a school in Martinsville, Indiana was “denied entrance to the boys’ bathroom.” The student “identifies” as a male.
“The student has repeatedly flouted the school’s policy and used the boys’ bathroom anyway – despite the option of using a single-occupant bathroom as an alternative,” the press release explained.
The student’s mother filed a lawsuit which demands that school staff and students refer to her daughter as a male and participate on the boys’ soccer team.
“Failing to accommodate the student in these ways, the student’s lawsuit argues, constitutes discrimination against the student in violation of federal Title IX rules and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,” the press release added.
A federal district court granted a preliminary injunction in favor of the student. The school district then appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
In a published statement, Rokita slammed the lawsuit. He is leading a 21-state amicus brief refuting the student’s arguments in the lawsuit and is supporting the school district.
"Boys’ bathrooms are for boys, and girls’ bathrooms are for girls," the attorney general said in a published statement. "I realize this concept is difficult for leftist America-haters to fathom, but most Hoosiers are rightly perplexed that we would even need to defend such basic common sense."
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The amicus brief explained how “sex-based discrimination” in this scenario is different than in a workplace setting.
“Bathrooms and locker rooms differ from employment in at least one critical respect: sex-based employment discrimination is prohibited by federal statute, whereas sex-based discrimination in bathrooms and locker rooms is both permitted and expected by federal statute,” it reads. It adds that Title IX “expressly allows sex-based seperation in certain settings.”
“Opening boys’ and girls’ bathrooms to students of the opposite biological sex threatens the privacy and safety of all students,” Rokita added. “No law requires schools to go down that dangerous path. No controlling precedent holds that Title IX or the Equal Protection Clause means that schools must permit students to use whatever bathrooms they like.”
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