After losing a lower court case earlier this year, the ACLU of Alaska is now appealing to the Alaska Supreme Court to strike down a Mat-Su School District policy that blocks gender-confused students from entering bathrooms of the opposite sex.

Last week the ACLU asked the high court to intervene and “restore the rights of transgender students” to use whichever bathrooms they feel best match their internal “gender identity.”

ACLU legal director for Alaska, Ruth Botstein, claims the Mat-Su policy is unconstitutional because it “violates transgender students’ rights to privacy and equal protection under the Alaska Constitution.”

The dispute goes back to October of 2022 when the Mat-Su School Board approved a policy clarifying that the use of restrooms and changing areas must be restricted to the exclusive use of students’ biological sex, regardless of how they personally identify.

Palmer Superior Court Judge Tom Jamgochian sided with the Mat-Su district, affirming that the bathroom policy does not violate the equal protection or privacy provisions of the Alaska Constitution, but serves “an important governmental interest in safeguarding student privacy in intimate settings.”

The case involved a nine-year-old biological girl who attends a local elementary school.

According to court documents, the girl’s parents claim she “exhibited gender nonconforming behavior from an early age,” and preferred to play “trucks and construction equipment and expressed a dislike for pink and other traditionally feminine colors.”

The parents assert that the girl told them she felt like a boy on the inside. After this disclosure, the girl began using male pronouns and a new “male-identified” name, while keeping her hair short and wearing boy’s clothing.

In August 2023, after the girl began identifying as a boy, her parents transferred her to a new school for what her mother coined a “fresh start.”

After meeting with school officials, the family was told that school board policy barred the girl from using the boys’ bathroom. Instead, she was given the option to use either the girls’ restroom or the nurse’s bathroom.

That wasn’t good enough, and the parents worked with the ACLU of Alaska to file a lawsuit, claiming the policy treated “transgender students differently from their peers and causes emotional and social harm.”

According to court documents, the girl has since abandoned her claims of being a boy, but the case is still moving forward.

The school board policy originated in response to a student who expressed concerns about disrobing in a locker room in the presence of someone who is of the opposite biological sex.

At the time, many parents across the community expressed concerns.

In his ruling earlier this year, Judge Jamgochian cited federal case law from the Ninth Circuit that recognizes that the “desire to shield one’s unclothed figure from [the] view of strangers, and particularly strangers of the opposite sex, is impelled by elementary self-respect and personal dignity.”

He also noted, “The universally accepted principle that protecting individual privacy may sometimes necessitate separation by sex is indisputable, especially for school age children who ‘are still developing, both emotionally and physically.’”

The Alaska Supreme Court is expected to take up the case later this year when both sides will present their case.

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