The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the Loudoun County Board of Education in connection with an Title IX case involving alleged discrimination against two Christian high-school students for raising religious objections about the school’s Transgender restroom practices.

The DOJ announced on Monday that it had filed a federal suit against the Northern Virginia district’s policymaking board over Policy 8040. This policy allows students to use school restrooms and lockers corresponding to their “consistently declared gender identity” regardless of their biological sex.

According to the DOJ, Policy 8040 mandates that all students, regardless of their religious beliefs or views, adopt the school board’s view on gender and affirm the gender identities of their transgender classmates.

The suit claims that the School Board policy forces plaintiffs to violate their religious beliefs by forcing them to use preferred pronouns or share intimate spaces with students who are the opposite gender.

The lawsuit claims that Loudoun County Public Schools used its transgender-inclusion rules to discriminate against two Christian Students, who were threatening with suspensions after “retaliatory Title IX procedures”, in violation of 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause.

In March, illegally recorded male classmates who were changing their clothes and discussing amongst themselves how uncomfortable they felt with the presence of the transgender students.

The school district then filed Title IX charges of sexual harassment against the two sophomore boys. cleared one of the Muslim boys of any wrongdoing. The other two Christian students were suspended.

The DOJ claims that the two Christian boys who spoke out were obligated by their religious beliefs to respect the biological differences between sexes and use sex-segregated facilities. The DOJ claims that the two Christian boys, who spoke up about the sex differences in facilities, are bound by their religion to use such facilities.

In an press release , Assistant U.S. attorney general Harmeet dhillon of the Justice Department’s civil rights division said: “Loudoun County’s decision to promote and advance gender ideology tramples the rights of religious student who cannot embrace ideas which deny biological realities.”

Dhillon cited a landmark Supreme Court case from 1969 concerning the right of students to free speech. He added: “Students don’t give up their First Amendment at school.”

The DOJ intervened on behalf of these boys who filed a claim for equal protection under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, in S.W. et. al. Loudoun County Board of School. This case is pending in the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Virginia. LCPS cannot discipline the boys until the case is resolved.

The Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares’ office, which launched a criminal investigation of the school system for its alleged mishandling the locker room incident over the summer, referred to federal authorities. The Department of Education Civil Rights Office concluded that the boys had been wrongly punished at the beginning of the school year.

Josh Hetzler of the Family Foundation of Virginia’s Founding Freedoms Law Center – the law firm that represents the boys – said in a statement released on Sunday that the suspensions were a “clear departure from constitutional protections”.

Hetzler stated that “our clients were disciplined for concerns about privacy and security–concerns which any reasonable student would be entitled to express.” “The Constitution prohibits public schools from rebranding orthodox Christian belief as harassment. The Justice Department intervention confirms this fundamental truth.”

LCPS, one of five school districts in Northern Virginia that could face federal funding cuts if they refuse to abandon their policies allowing students to choose the school facilities they want to use.