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A public school district in northern Virginia voted yesterday to keep its current pro-trans policies despite the administration’s orders to ban trans students from using the restrooms and locker rooms associated with their gender.

The Loudoun County School Board voted to maintain its current policies regarding the facilities just days after the U.S. Education Department (ED) ordered the district – along with four nearby school districts – to ban trans students from using the facilities associated with their gender. The administration claimed that letting trans students use the appropriate facilities violated Title IX, the law that bans discrimination on the basis of sex in education.

The current administration reversed President Joe Biden’s interpretation of Title IX, which found the statute’s prohibition on discrimination “on the basis of sex” includes anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination. The rules rely on the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, which found that sex-based discrimination necessarily covers discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, because it’s impossible to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people without taking sex into account.

That is, denying trans students use of restroom facilities or making use of such facilities difficult solely because of their sex assigned at birth was, to the Biden administration, a form of illegal sex-based discrimination. And since many students can’t last an entire day of school without using the restroom, such discrimination could effectively deny trans students an education.

The ED investigated the Virginia school districts, saying it had gotten complaints alleging “that students in the Divisions avoid using school restrooms whenever possible because of the schools’ policies, and that female students have witnessed male students inappropriately touching other students and watching female students change in a female locker room.”

There is no evidence that trans people are a threat to cisgender girls and women in restrooms, but a 2021 study from UCLA’s Williams Institute found that trans people are four times more likely than cis people to be victims of violent crime.

The ED then ordered the schools to rescind their trans-inclusive policies within 10 days and to “adopt biology-based definition of the words ‘male’ and ‘female’ in all practices and policies relating to Title IX.”

But the school board in Loudoun County voted 6-3 to keep its current policy, explaining in a statement that they are following precedent set by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. In 2020, that court affirmed a lower court decision in favor of trans student Gavin Grimm, who had sued his school district after he was told to use the bathroom in a bucket in a converted janitor’s closet and was called a “freak” at a school board meeting about his bathroom usage. The court found that Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution prohibited his school district from discriminating against him.

“Our priority remains the same: doing what is right for Loudoun County’s young people; focusing on educating our students and ensuring our schools are places where every child feels they belong,” the Loudoun County School Board said in a statement.

The other four school districts ordered to end trans equality have not yet said how they will proceed, but they have to respond by Friday, which will be the end of the 10-day period. Prince William County School Board members met with lawyers last week and issued a statement saying that it “continues to review and work through legal issues related” to the ED’s order and that the board “remains firmly committed to fostering a safe, inclusive, and respectful learning environment for all students and staff.”