From girls fleeing locker rooms in fear to homeschoolers facing potential threats of imprisonment, Illinois parents are squaring off against what they’ve deemed to be school and state “overreach.”

Last week, Nicole Georgas stood before the Illinois Deerfield Public School District 109 Board and laid out a shocking complaint. In a story that’s made national headlines, the mom explained that her 13-year-old daughter was allegedly forced by school administrators to undress in front of a transgender-identifying student in the girl’s locker room.

In February, her daughter found herself in the girl’s locker room with a biological male student. She was “frightened,” Georgas said, and refused to change for PE. After raising the issue with school officials, Georgas said her daughter “was told by the administration that a student can use the bathroom as well as a female locker room because they now identify as female.” Georgas quickly flagged this as a violation of President Donald Trump’s executive order, “Keeping Men out of Women’s Sports” — but to no avail.

That same day, Georgas said, “I filed a civil rights complaint on behalf of my daughter with the Department of Justice. It has now been referred to the Department of Education. A federal complaint has been filed with the district to protect the students.”

Georgas’s daughter wasn’t alone in her concern. She and her classmates united in their refusal to undress in the same room as the biologically male student. That’s what many believe triggered Assistant Superintendent for Student Services Joanna Ford, Assistant Principal Cathy Van Treese, and other teachers to “all came into the girls’ locker room, making them change into uniform,” Georgas alleged. “This went on all week.”

Ultimately, Georgas underscored, “The girls want their locker rooms and bathrooms back. They want their privacy back. … My 13-year-old daughter’s well-being, mental health, and privacy are at stake.” As she emphasized during an interview with America Reports last week, “This sets such a dangerous precedent for girls everywhere by allowing men into safe places.”

This is the kind of clash countless Americans have protested for years — men in women’s spaces, ranging from sports to bathrooms. For many parents, homeschooling became a shield against such battles, a way to escape a public school environment they believe is unsafe and politically extreme. And yet, at least for parents in Illinois, House Bill 2827 — the Homeschool Act — seems to be taking aim at that option too.

Last Wednesday, hundreds of parents stormed the Illinois Capitol to protest the legislation that “would establish requirements for parents to meet to homeschool their children,” Fox reported. “[I]f they do not comply, they could face up to a Class C misdemeanor, punishable by up to 30 days in jail.” The bill cleared the Education Policy Committee in an 8-4 vote, and it’s now headed to the House floor.

Will Estrada, senior counsel for the Homeschool Legal Defense Association, said the bill has “open-ended” language that could allow “unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats to be able to write different sections of regulations.” He went on to state, “If this bill is passed into law, it’s going to be expanded in future years to put even more restrictions on homeschool and private school families.” He highlighted how homeschooling families are known to be doing well socially, emotionally, and academically. So, he asked, “Why are we messing with them? … This bill is a solution in search of a problem.”

Illinois parents haven’t been shy in voicing their opposition either. “We became homeschoolers in 2020 upon seeing all the government overreach,” one mother told Fox. “[T]he fact that they are now coming for us again with government overreach, I feel like it’s an attack on parental rights.” She emphasized how one part of the legislation states “that the student should be educated to serve the state. That’s absurd. I don’t align with the state. I don’t want what the state prioritizes to be the priority of my family. We have a different value system. We are not ownership of the state.”

Another parent, Luke Schurter, shared that this proposal would be “a step back for homeschool freedom, not a step forward.” Even Dr. Albert Mohler, the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, dissected this issue on a recent episode of “The Briefing.” According to Mohler, an attack on homeschooling “isn’t about education, it’s about a transformation in the mission of the schools into social service agencies.”

Mohler explained how some are rightly concerned with having “oversight when it comes to homeschooling. And what would that oversight look like? Well, we need to find out which parents are qualified to teach. We need to find whether the curriculum they’re teaching is really substantial or not.” These are legitimate concerns, he added, but “I don’t trust government to deal with them. I don’t trust government to be able to be more competent than parents, and families, and extended kinship in pulling this off.”

There are instances in which government does intervene with educational affairs, Mohler noted. And surely, “there are people in the educational establishment who are believing Christians, faithful Christians, very much committed to the teaching of children and their welfare,” Mohler concluded.

But as Family Research Council’s Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for Education Studies, told The Washington Stand, “The involvement of parents in their children's lives and in their schools has never been more important. Parental rights must be exercised if we want to stop government encroachment on our families. We live in the greatest country in the world and our children deserve to enjoy the benefits of that blessing — a blessing we must appreciate and protect on their behalf, so that they can do the same for future generations.”