[JURIST] The Florida American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) [official website] filed a lawsuit [complaint, PDF] against the Marion County school district on Thursday, challenging their bathroom policy as anti-transgender. The complaint was filed after a school suspended a student for using a different restroom than that required under the policy. The school district’s policy, adopted as Resolution No. 16-001 [materials], requires that students use the restroom based upon the gender they were born into, as opposed to the gender that they identify as, or instead use a single-user restroom. The ACLU alleges that the school district has violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of of 1972 [materials], which states in pertinent part, “[n]o person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex … be subjected to discrimination under any [public] education program or activity.” The ACLU believes the court should allow the student to use the restroom they identify with, “revise all relevant District policies to ensure conformity with requirements of Title IX,” and provide training to the relevant employees of the school district, along with removing the suspension from the student’s record.

On Friday the Obama administration stated that it would issue guidance [CNN report] to schools on ensuring “transgender students enjoy a supportive and nondiscriminatory school environment.” This comes as several challenges have been brought to so-called anti-transgender bathroom policies. Earlier this week the Department of Justice filed a complaint challenging House Bill 2 [JURIST report], a North Carolina law prohibiting local legislatures from passing laws to protect transgender individual’s right to use public restroom and locker rooms that align with their gender identity. In April the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled in favor of [JURIST report] of a transgender student where a school policy required that students use restrooms corresponding with their “biological genders.”