PRESS RELEASE: DFI Files Federal Civil Rights Complaint Against NY School District as Male Student Switches Gender Identity Throughout the Day and Uses Girls’ Locker Room, Bathrooms

WASHINGTON – The Defense of Freedom Institute for Policy Studies (DFI) filed a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) against South Colonie Central School District in New York for violating Title IX by allowing a male student to repeatedly enter the girls’ locker room and bathrooms while female students were undressing for sports practice. The filing supplements a prior OCR complaint filed by Kevin Martin, whose daughter attends Colonie Central High School, where the violations occurred.

The male student is a member of the boys’ track and field team. Despite competing as a male, attending boys’ track meets, and wearing a boys’ team uniform, the student, who identifies as a girl during the school day, has regularly entered the girls’ locker room fully dressed to watch female athletes change. On at least four occasions, female students reported to school officials that the boy had stood and stared as they undressed and had even approached them and attempted to engage them in conversation.

For months, members of the Colonie Central High School girls’ track team endured this harassment, which school officials not only ignored but authorized in accordance with the school district’s gender identity anti-discrimination policies. Despite formal complaints, the district refused to act—insisting that the girls either change in front of the boy, use “all-gender” bathrooms located on different floors of the school, or use the two stalls inside the girls’ locker room. While the girls attempted these alternatives, the lines were so long that they risked being late to practice and subject to disciplinary actions. The school’s response not only failed to protect the girls—it penalized them for objecting.

“My daughter and her teammates have a right to feel safe in their own locker room,” said Kevin Martin. “South Colonie refused to protect them and told them to accommodate the boy instead. That’s not fairness—it’s cowardice. I never thought I’d have to file a federal complaint just so my daughter could change clothes in a girls’ locker room without being stared at by a male student.”

According to district officials, the male student is allowed to identify as a girl during the school day to access female locker rooms and bathrooms but can identify as a boy after school to compete on the boys’ track team.

“The fact that South Colonie allows a male student to identify as a girl during the school day to access female locker rooms, but as a boy after school to compete on the boys’ team, lays bare the absurdity of the district’s position,” said Don Daugherty, DFI’s Senior Litigation Counsel. “Title IX is not a tool for social experimentation. It is a federal civil rights law, and South Colonie is violating it.”

The supplemental complaint filed today outlines not only South Colonie’s deliberate indifference to repeated complaints of sexual harassment but also serious failures in its Title IX grievance procedures. School officials ignored key evidence, failed to interview the complainant or her father, cited only state authorities, and disregarded federal law. Under Title IX, schools must act when harassment is so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it denies students equal access to education. South Colonie failed to do so here.

DFI is urging OCR to launch an immediate investigation and take all necessary enforcement actions—including withdrawal of federal funding—if South Colonie School District continues to ignore its legal duty to protect girls from harassment in the very spaces designed for their privacy and safety.

To read DFI’s civil rights complaint, click here.