Student-led resistance has put a spotlight on one Maryland middle school’s locker room policy, which allows a transgender-identifying biological female to use the boys’ locker room. When parents of a student who felt uncomfortable with this arrangement complained, school officials acted as if they were the ones with a problem, alleges a complaint they filed Friday with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR).

The controversy began last month, when on September 4 a physical education (P.E.) teacher at West Middle School in Carroll County, Md. took boys in his P.E. class on a tour of the locker room, where he said they would all change into their P.E. clothes. But there was a problem: one of the “boys” on the tour is a biological girl.

One participant, an excellent student who was praised by a teacher for “his leadership skills and positivity in group settings,” was “aware that other boys in his class shared his objection to sharing the space with a student of the opposite sex” and “immediately raised these concerns with his parents,” and his parents contacted the principal, Shannon Zepp, the same day.

Zepp responded by citing page 270 of the Carroll County Public Schools’ (CCPS) Student Services Manual, which stipulates that “students are permitted to use a restroom, locker room, or dressing room that corresponds to their gender identity,” and that students “uncomfortable” with this arrangement “will be provided a safe and non-stigmatizing alternative.”

But the school’s offered alternative was far from “non-stigmatizing.” Zepp proposed that, instead of changing in the boys’ locker room, with all the other boys, the concerned boy could change in a single-stall staff bathroom located in the school’s administrative office, far from his P.E. class. At the same time, Zepp asserted that the school was not requiring the boy to change his routine.

The boys’ parents responded by email the next day, “[T]he so-called ‘alternative’ provided to our son is not an equal or equivalent facility. A staff bathroom in the main office is not designed for students, is far from the gym, may be occupied, and is not a locker room at all. This is not a true accommodation — it is an inferior and stigmatizing option.”

On September 5, the male student met with Zepp and School Counselor Beth Buckalew to discuss his discomfort. “Rather than take his concerns seriously,” the complaint contends, “Ms. Buckalew was dismissive of his objections and even smiled and laughed at him during the conversation — leading him to ask why she was laughing.”

After this, school officials began passing the locker room problem around like a game of “hot potato.” On September 8, Principal Zepp passed the buck, describing her role as merely “operationaliz[ing] the guidelines set forth by CCPS” and directing parents to CCPS director of middle schools Amy Gromada. Gromada minimized the problem, reiterated the insufficient accommodation, and said “that she would escalate the matter to an assistant superintendent,” the complaint described. “When the [parents] requested a follow-up with him, Ms. Gromada told them he was probably too busy.”

On September 11, the parents went over Gromada’s head with an email to three CCPS superintendents. They “explained that no one had adequately addressed the objections they had raised to their son’s treatment or offered a solution that provided their son with equal opportunities” and “requested a written response addressing the concerns expressed in their email, as well as a concrete plan of action to ensure that their son did not need to compromise his privacy in order to use the boys’ locker room.”

Up to this point, the complaint noted, the trans-identifying girl in question “had used a single-user staff bathroom,” but the parents feared that “she might at any time begin using the boys’ locker room to change clothes for P.E.”

Those fears were justified the next week, when on September 16 the male student encountered the female student leaving his locker room before the third P.E. class of the term. At this point, the true scope of the problem — which school officials had repeatedly denied — became evident.

After the September 16 class, no fewer than seven boys “refused to change in front of the girl and elected instead to change in a single-stall bathroom, resulting in the [redacted family’s] son being late for his next class.” On September 18, nine boys boycotted the locker room. Eventually, “as more students in the class became aware of the biological girl’s use of the boys’ locker room, at least 11 boys in the class have refused to change in the boys’ locker room for P.E. class,” according to the complaint. (That is a sizable proportion of the P.E. class, at a school with a student-teacher ratio of 16:1.)

This level of non-participation created inevitable problems, as students who had to go out of their way to change would often arrive late to their next class. Yet school officials remained satisfied with their unsatisfactory accommodations. In a September 17 email responding to a parental inquiry as to why their concerns had not been addressed, Gromada contended that the “concerns have been addressed through these communications.”

Yet the line of boys waiting outside a single-stall staff bathroom to change suggested otherwise. The ongoing tardiness proved such a visible headache that Principal Zepp continued to personally intervene. On September 18, she suggested the boys could also change in the nurse’s rest room. When she saw the boys were reluctant, knowing that rest room was used by sick children, Zepp burst out, “Why? Do you want to be late?”

On September 22, the student who initially objected was last in line to change — thereby making him late to his next class — and Zepp ordered him to change first going forward. Zepp provided no reason, and the only rationale that occurs to this author is that his parents were most likely to complain if he were delayed. On September 24, the student “questioned this arbitrary rule,” and an “administrator told him [Zepp] was busy and sent him to a support room for ‘not listening to Ms. Zepp’ — in other words, punishing him for questioning his treatment.”

In response to persistent correspondence, school officials eventually found a third single-occupancy rest room in which the boys could change and, after hiring outside counsel, announced plans to install four “private stalls” in each locker room. But they refused to countenance any attempt to address the real issue: a female was using the men’s locker room to change.

Similar stories are likely playing out right now in schools across America, where radicalized education officials have more allegiance to gender ideology than to gender non-discrimination. Given the reactionary defensiveness of school officials, this problematic policy only came to light thanks to a combination of a highly conscientious middle schooler who regularly informed his parents about what school officials neglected to tell them, and highly involved parents who persistently emailed school officials nearly every day for a month.

“Our son has faced displacement, stigmatization, dismissive conduct by staff, and now retaliation by the school principal,” the parents wrote. “CCPS has chosen to elevate one student’s apparent preferences while disregarding the legal rights of others. Hiding behind a poorly designed policy while children are left to fend for themselves is not leadership. It is a failure of responsibility, plain and simple.”

Last week, four former students of CCPS filed lawsuits against the school district under Maryland’s Child Victims Act, alleging sexual abuse across five schools and four decades. The issues are different, but they share a common theme: “Hiding behind a poorly designed policy while children are left to fend for themselves.”

The school’s response was also informed by an inexcusably poor understanding of the law. The school claimed that it was not required by law “to create a separate equal space identical to the existing locker room” as an accommodation. Its Title IX policy, which claims to be “last ‘Reviewed/Updated’ on September 2, 2025,” claims that “gender identity is covered under Title IX.” However, as the complaint lays out, that claim relies upon a misinterpretation of Title IX promulgated last year by the Biden administration, which was vacated by two separate courts in January and February of 2025. A third federal judge vacated the administrative rule on October 22.

“In this case, a [redacted-age] boy only wants to use the boys’ locker room to change for P.E. class without a girl present,” the complaint summarized. “Rather than grant him this simple request, WMS and CCPS personnel have ridiculed his feelings, made him consistently late for class, singled him out with arbitrary rules in front of his peers, punished him for questioning these rules, and offered alternative ‘options’ — such as using distant facilities or not changing his clothes — that are unequal, demeaning, and stigmatizing.”

“All the while, the school district has failed to recognize that its policies on ‘gender identity,’ which denigrate the interests of boys and girls in privacy and dignity in their sex-separated locker rooms and thus discriminate against them on the basis of sex, pose an insurmountable obstacle to addressing the discriminatory and harassing treatment imposed on the [parents’] son and his male classmates,” the complaint concluded.

But perhaps the boy should count his blessings. If he lived in Loudoun County, Va., he might have been suspended for complaining about a girl in his locker room, and the school district might have destroyed evidence to cover it up. What is it about D.C.-area school districts and totalitarian transgender policies?