Bathroom privacy case heads to Seventh Circuit after dismissal

Advocacy organization Awake Illinois founder Shannon Adcock and attorney Ajay Gupta are calling on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals to revive a federal lawsuit brought by a Bolingbrook High School student who says her privacy rights were violated after she encountered a transgender student in a girls' bathroom. The group held a news conference in Chicago as the legal battle over bathroom access, Title IX and the rights of female students moves to the federal appeals court. "Privacy matters. Defend Title IX. Defend girls," Adcock said, arguing that the case is about the privacy and dignity of female students rather than political ideology. The lawsuit, F.F. v. Valley View Community Unit School District 365U, was filed in August 2025 by James Fisher on behalf of his daughter, identified in court filings as F.F. The student was a junior at Bolingbrook High School when, in November 2024, she exited a girls' bathroom stall and encountered a transgender student near her stall. According to the Seventh Circuit's account of the underlying facts, F.F. feared the student could have seen her exposed body through gaps around the stall, although she did not allege that the student actually saw or attempted to see her. She reported experiencing anxiety, discomfort and shame following the encounter. Fisher subsequently raised the issue with school officials. The school told him the transgender student had access to the girls' bathroom under an accommodation plan based on the student's gender identity. The Illinois Department of Human Rights' guidance instructs Illinois schools that students must be permitted to use restrooms, locker rooms and changing rooms consistent with their gender-related identity without having to provide documentation or other proof. The guidance also states that another student's privacy concerns do not constitute a basis for restricting that access, while recommending that students seeking additional privacy be provided a more private option when possible. That policy is at the center of the lawsuit. Gupta, who represents the plaintiffs pro bono, said the lawsuit is seeking what he described as a limited remedy: objective review of requests by biological males seeking access to female-only spaces rather than automatic access based solely on self-identification. "The school district's policy, which treats a self-declaration as conclusive and dismisses the female student's privacy concerns as speculative, is precisely the harm against which Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause are supposed to guard," Gupta said at the press conference. The federal district court dismissed the lawsuit recently and clarified four days later that the dismissal was with prejudice. The plaintiffs have now appealed that decision to the Seventh Circuit. The case has already made one trip to the Seventh Circuit. In a July 16 decision, a three-judge panel dismissed an earlier appeal involving the denial of F.F.'s request for a preliminary injunction. The court did not rule on the underlying Title IX or constitutional claims, instead finding that the appeal had become moot after the district court dismissed the case. The new appeal challenges that underlying dismissal. Gupta is pointing to a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision as part of the plaintiffs' legal argument. On June 30, the Supreme Court ruled in West Virginia v. B.P.J. that Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause permit states to maintain girls' and women's sports teams based on biological sex. The decision arose from athletics cases rather than bathroom access, but its interpretation of sex under Title IX is central to the plaintiffs' argument that the Seventh Circuit should reconsider the district court's treatment of their claims. The Supreme Court's decision was significant because it marked the high court's first major ruling directly addressing whether Title IX permits sex-based distinctions involving transgender students in school athletics. The Court held that schools may determine eligibility for women's and girls' sports based on biological sex. Adcock said the ruling strengthens the argument that biological sex cannot simply be erased from consideration when courts evaluate protections for female students. "Biology isn't bigotry," Adcock said. "No boys in girls' bathrooms. This is not hate. This is not discrimination. This is about basic human rights." The issue presents a direct clash between two legal principles – Illinois' protections for transgender students and the plaintiffs' argument that female students have independent privacy and sex-discrimination protections under federal law. Illinois' Human Rights Act and accompanying state guidance currently protect students from discrimination based on gender identity and specifically instruct schools not to restrict bathroom access according to a student's anatomy or sex assigned at birth. The plaintiffs argue that those policies improperly shift the burden onto female students by requiring them to leave common-use facilities or seek more private accommodations when they object to sharing those spaces. The district court previously rejected the plaintiffs' claims, while also noting that the student had not alleged that the transgender student actually viewed or attempted to view her while she was undressed. The court's ruling became the target of criticism from Awake Illinois, which argues that a girl's privacy interest should not depend upon proving that someone actually saw her naked. "This case was never about ideology," Gupta said. "It was, and it remains, about whether schools may force teenage girls to share intimate spaces on campus with biological males based on nothing more than a self-declaration for cross-sex access." Fisher, the girl's father and named plaintiff's parent, also spoke at the news conference, continuing his public challenge to the school district's policy. For Awake Illinois, the appeal represents a broader fight over how Title IX should protect female students in Illinois schools. "The law remains the law," Adcock said. "History will keep a record." The Seventh Circuit will now determine whether the plaintiffs' challenge to the district court's dismissal can proceed. The appellate court's eventual ruling could have implications beyond Valley View Community Unit School District 365U, particularly as federal courts continue to deal with the intersection of Title IX, state nondiscrimination laws and transgender students' access to sex-separated facilities.