A Virginia school district frequently at odds with conservative parents and the Trump administration is facing a federal lawsuit over its policy that requires students to use other students’ preferred pronouns, alleging the rule violates the First Amendment. 

A conservative law firm started by top Trump adviser Stephen Miller, America First Legal, filed a federal lawsuit against Fairfax County Public Schools on behalf of a Catholic student at West Springfield High School referred to as “Jane Doe” in the complaint.

The lawsuit alleges that the district’s policy allowing students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identities, without their parents’ consent or documentation that they have legally changed their name or sex, violates Title IX. FCPS is the subject of a complaint with the Department of Education over the policy and complaints that the district told girls to change in bathrooms instead of preventing male students from using the girls’ locker room.

In a new addition to legal problems plaguing Northern Virginia school districts over their transgender policies, America First Legal’s lawsuit takes issue with a portion of Fairfax schools’ “Student Rights & Responsibilities” guide that it argues unconstitutionally forces students to use their peers’ preferred pronouns. 

The lawsuit states that “Jane Doe” believes “that God created each person as male or female … that sex cannot be altered, and that the rejection of one’s biological sex is a rejection of the image of God within that person.”

“Furthermore, Doe believes that to acknowledge or endorse that sex can be altered is to speak against God and her sincerely held religious and philosophical beliefs,” the lawsuit says. “Doe further believes that being required to refer to another person using pronouns that do not correspond to their biological sex is harmful to that person because it is a lie.”

America First Legal says the policy and the threat of discipline for students who do not comply with it violate its client’s free speech rights and her free exercise of religion. 

A senior counsel for America First Legal, Ian Prior, said, “The law could not be more clear: schools cannot compel speech, cannot trample religious liberty, and cannot sacrifice girls’ equal protection rights in the name of a vague and arbitrary ideology that Fairfax County Public Schools can’t even define with any reasonable clarity.”

“This case is about restoring sanity, fairness, and the constitutional rights every student deserves,” Mr. Prior said. 

FCPS did not respond to the Sun’s request for comment by the time of publication.