Virginia High Schoolers Stage Walkout Over Transgender Bathroom Policy: ‘Invasion of Privacy’

Students at a Virginia high school are protesting a policy that allows nonbinary and transgender students to use the bathrooms of their choice. 

Local news outlet WJLA-TV reported that on Wednesday, students at Woodgrove High School in Loudoun County, Virginia, walked out of school in protest of a district-wide policy adopted in 2021 that allows trans students to use the bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity. 

“In the locker rooms in the morning it's an invasion of privacy, as I said because when men and natural-born males are in our locker rooms and they are showering in the morning, natural-born females can walk in there as they please,” one male student told WJLA-TV. “And that is not OK. And it goes against what we believe in.”

Between 50 and 100 students are estimated to have walked out on Wednesday in protest of the policy. Those students demanded that the district reverse the policy and asked the school board to restore girls- and boys-only locker rooms and bathrooms. 

Another male student told the news outlet that he would like to change in the locker room after football practice and “not feel uncomfortable with other genders in there watching me.”

One female student echoed the male students’ remarks, saying she stopped using the bathroom at school after the implementation of the district-wide policy. 

“I stopped using them [the bathrooms] because I don't know what's going to happen to me in there. And people can be like, 'Oh, well, that's paranoid.' I'm telling you right now half the women in this building feel the same way,” she said. “We don't use the bathrooms. We hold our pee until we can't.” 

The Loudoun County School Board, which oversees Woodgrove High School, did not immediately return The Messenger’s request for comment. 

The school did not appear to swayed by the protest. In a statement to WJLA, a school board spokesperson said the district is “continuing to follow its established process in its review of the latest Model Policies issued by the Virginia Department of Education. Policy 8040 is in review along with the new Model Policies, by the Student Services Committee.”