A group of 51 families in Chicago had asked a federal court to temporarily ban a school policy granting transgender students access to girls locker rooms and restrooms, but the district judge passed on the decision to US Magistrate Judge on Monday, the day when the school year starts.
The case was filed in May and the plaintiffs from Township High School District 211 in Palatine were expecting the judgement before or on the first day of the school year.
After the August 15 court hearing, the Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Gilbert said that he will follow up with the case soon and send his recommendation on injunction to district judge Jorge Alonso, according to Chicago Tribune.
Families who are part of a group called Students and Parents for Privacy say that the district policy ignores the privacy and safety of students.
"Every parent sends their kids to school expecting that the school is going to protect them at the most basic level -- their safety, their privacy, their dignity," said Jeremy Tedesco, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs in the case. "What we're asking for is a temporary injunction that will allow the girls to continue to have single-sex facilities to themselves, free from the presence of the male students while the case is pending."
The lawsuit says that some students "live in constant anxiety, fear and apprehension that a biological boy will walk in at any time while they use the locker rooms and showers and see them in a state of undress or naked."
A transgender student from William Fremd High School in Palatine had lodged a complaint with the US Department of Education that the student was restricted from using restrooms and locker rooms according to gender identity.
The federal authorities responded by enforcing a directive to allow students to use bathrooms according to gender identity, and deemed the school district guilty of violating Title IX, a non-discrimination clause in the federal education code.
District 211 implemented the policy to avoid forgoing federal funds and further legal complaints.
The Students and Parents for Privacy group is being represented by Alliance Defending Freedom and Thomas More Society, which said that the defendants are hinging their arguments on a "subjective definition of sex."
Lawyers from the Education Department, meanwhile, said that prohibiting restroom and locker room access for the transgender student from the district according to gender identity causes psychological harm to the student.
