November 26, 2025 - Attorney General Miyares Leads Multistate Effort Defending Title IX and Student Privacy

Attorney General Miyares Leads Multistate Effort Defending Title IX and Student Privacy

RICHMOND, Va. – Attorney General Jason Miyares today announced that Virginia is leading a 21-state coalition in filing an amicus brief urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to uphold the dismissal of lawsuits filed by the Fairfax County School Board and the Arlington School Board. The school divisions argue that Title IX and the Fourth Circuit’s 2020 decision in Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board require them to adopt policies allowing students to access bathrooms and locker rooms based solely on self-declared gender identity. The amicus brief explains that this claim has no legal grounding.

“Nothing in Title IX, its regulations, or the Grimm decision requires school divisions to adopt sweeping policies that disregard basic privacy protections or put student safety at risk. Privacy and safety are not partisan issues. They are fundamental expectations in every Virginia school,” said Attorney General Jason Miyares. “The school divisions’ effort to twist Grimm far beyond its actual holding is unsupported by law and profoundly irresponsible. The district court made the proper call, and the Fourth Circuit should uphold it. Fairfax and Arlington are not exempt from following the law, and their reckless choices make clear that protecting children was never their priority.”

The brief explains that Grimm was a narrow, as-applied ruling about a single student and a single bathroom policy. The court did not hold that schools must open all sex-segregated facilities to any student based on self-identification, and it explicitly did not address locker rooms or changing areas. Despite this, Fairfax and Arlington have adopted broad policies that treat a student’s self-assertion of gender identity as sufficient to access private facilities reserved for the opposite biological sex.

Title IX was enacted to prevent sex-based discrimination in education. Its regulations were written with the understanding that “sex” refers to biological sex. When schools accept federal funds, they agree to comply with these clear, longstanding requirements.

In September, Attorney General Miyares filed two briefs opposing an earlier attempt by the school divisions to block the U.S. Department of Education from enforcing federal protections for women in school bathrooms, locker rooms, and changing areas.

Virginia was joined by Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming in filing the brief.

Read the brief here.

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