The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has opened an investigation into a complaint by the Defending Freedom Institute against Arlington Public Schools’ transgender bathroom policy. National Review detailed the complaint against the Virginia school district here.

OCR “will investigate whether the Division failed to respond as required to reports made in fall 2024 of sexual harassment occurring in the girls’ locker room at the [Washington-Liberty] Aquatics Center in violation of Title IX,” the office said.

A recap of the case in question: Arlington Public Schools operates numerous district-owned pool facilities, one of which is at Washington-Liberty High School. The facility is open to community use after school hours for swim lessons, among other recreational activities. Because it is district-owned, the facility adheres to APS’s bathroom policy, which allows individuals to use whatever restroom or locker room corresponds with their chosen “gender identity” — not their biological sex.

Pool staff allowed a man into the Washington-Liberty women’s locker room last year because he “identified as transgender,” as staff told one mom who reported the presence of a nude adult male in her daughter’s locker room. Dozens of young girls witnessed this man standing naked in their locker room. That man, it turns out, was a sex offender with a long rap sheet and a proclivity for playing the “transgender” card to gain access to women’s locker rooms. He entered girls’ spaces at other public-school-owned pools in Virginia, as well as at a gym and a rec center, by claiming to be transgender.

APS said that it would implement stricter identification-screening measures to prevent sexual predators from entering girls’ spaces, but the district has not rescinded the policy that allowed the man in the locker room in the first place, nor has it announced any intentions to do so.