The transgender movement’s judo-flip of Title IX continues to dominate in progressive jurisdictions. A high school in Oregon, Wis. is allowing a transgender-identifying male to continue using its girls’ locker room after he instigated a fight in a school entryway on September 17. Girls who were uncomfortable with the boy’s presence were encouraged to change in single-occupancy bathrooms instead.

“‘Danger ideology’ trains adults to reject commonsense. That is how a school can watch a violent fight, then send the same male student back into the girls’ bathroom,” Moms for Liberty responded. Girls “have every reason to fear boys in their bathrooms. Privacy is not bigotry. Safety is not optional. When administrators treat girls’ fear as a counseling problem instead of a policy failure, they invite exploitation by the people who will use that policy.”

Video footage shows the transgender-identifying male raise his fists in a school entryway and lunge at a female student after a crude verbal altercation. Oregon High School, which declined to renew its contract for a full-time School Resource Officer this year, called police to control the scene. However, one parent claimed the school did not notify her about the incident, and she only learned about it when she received a video from a student.

The school district has also not released a public incident report for the fight or the discipline file for the male student involved. Parents claim he has been using the women’s restroom for “a while” and has a history of aggressive, violent confrontation. The hideous language flowing effortlessly from his mouth in the video footage of the incident is certainly consistent with a history of confrontation.

The trans-identifying student has also encountered hostility from the school’s female population for his insistence on using their facilities. Earlier this month, female students took a photo of the boy leaving the girls restroom and circulated on Snapchat with the derogatory caption, “It just went in the girls bathroom.” Parents said the girls waited until he left to enter the bathroom due to safety concerns.

The school district has chosen to respond to this impasse by siding definitively with the trans-identifying male student, placing all the girls at risk. Oregon School Board’s Policy 157 declares that the district will not discriminate on the basis of “sexual orientation; gender identity; gender expression; [and] gender nonconformity.” It has interpreted this to mean that the boy may use the girls’ locker room, even if this means the girls must all change in single-occupancy restrooms.

In an email to one concerned parent, district superintendent Shannon Anderson hid behind federal court precedent. “Our school district is required to follow the law as determined by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals,” she explained. “The Seventh Circuit has affirmed that denying a transgender student access to the restroom matching their gender identity constitutes sex discrimination under Title IX and violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.”

Anderson felt a need to explain the obvious incongruence of this policy with the Supreme Court’s recent decision on girls’ sports. “The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent rulings in West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox … that state laws restricting school sports teams to biological sex do not violate Title IX or the Equal Protection Clause were limited to athletic team participation, and did not address policies regarding school bathrooms,” she continued. “As a result, the District follows the federal case law noted above — students must legally be able to access the bathroom that the student identifies with.”

This sounds like an explanation drafted by the school district’s legal counsel. And, until the obvious implications of West Virginia v. B.P.J. are applied to locker rooms in the Seventh Circuit, it is arguably the “safe” option. But it does nothing to protect female students. If the school district really wanted to, it could press for a change in the policy, as a handful of school districts in California did successfully. Yet it has not lifted a finger.

“The safety and security of our students is our top priority,” Anderson insisted. However, the very next sentence changes the subject: “To meet our legal requirements, in order to use a bathroom different from the sex assigned at birth, the student and parent/guardian must have a signed Gender Support Plan that is completed in collaboration with student services staff and administration. We also have individual bathrooms available in each school that any student is welcome to use at any time.”

In practice, then, the school is acting as if meeting its “legal requirements” is its top priority, and the plight of female students is an afterthought. This is an ironic reversal of Title IX, which requires educational recipients of federal funds to treat men and women equitably.

Parents also claimed that the girls who felt uncomfortable with a boy in their locker room were advised to use individual restrooms instead, and also to seek counseling.

The storm in Oregon, Wis. cascades out of another dispute in New Richmond, Wis., which broke forth in a federal lawsuit this spring. In January, New Richmond parents informed school board members that male students were using the girls’ restroom. In February, a vote to maintain sex-segregated bathrooms and locker rooms failed, with support from only two out of seven school board members. In April, the parents filed a federal lawsuit. The U.S. Department of Education has also opened an investigation.

Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.), the Republican nominee for governor, is turning the locker room controversy into an issue in the governor’s race against Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley (D). “As a father of three daughters, I understand how important it is for parents to know their children are safe at school,” he said. “Crowley supports allowing men to compete in girls’ sports, co-sponsored legislation requiring taxpayers to fund menstrual products in boys’ bathrooms at public schools, and signed a resolution that referred to mothers as ‘birthing parents.’”

While in the legislature, Crowley cosponsored bills to recognize a “Transgender Day of Remembrance” and create a transgender equality task force. As county executive, he has participated in highly visible ways at Pride events, The Daily Wire notes. Thus far, he has not weighed in on the controversy at Oregon High School, where young female students are afraid to change in their own locker room.