Illinois parents have warned a suburban Chicago school district that assigning overnight rooms by gender identity and hiding the details from families violates federal law, and they say a lawsuit is next if nothing changes.
Just the News reported that the Liberty Justice Center sent a warning letter on behalf of Illinois parents to Community High School District 128 Superintendent Marc Schaffer, challenging overnight trip lodging, restroom and locker-room access, curriculum materials, and staff speech rules tied to gender identity.
The letter lands as another New Jersey district, Chathams School District in the New York City suburbs, settled related litigation with Moms for Liberty and locked in binding limits on the same kind of secrecy policies.
For parents, the core dispute is simple. Schools that treat a student’s claimed gender identity as the deciding fact, and then withhold that arrangement from mothers and fathers, strip families of the chance to protect their children’s privacy and safety.
Liberty Justice Center counsel Kathryn Cosgrove’s letter says District 128’s overnight trip policy assigns students to lodging based on gender identity. Parents receive only the “chosen names” of participating students.
That setup, the letter argues, means parents cannot know whether their children will share “quarters or beds” with the opposite sex. It blocks informed decisions about safety, welfare, and physical privacy.
The same letter says the district’s Gender Support Guidelines push “gender diversity” materials and gender-affirming literature without the notice and consent the Supreme Court’s Mahmoud ruling requires. Mahmoud is the high-court decision that backed parental notice and opt-out rights on LGBTQ curriculum.
Cosgrove’s letter also says the guidelines hide a student’s “transgender status” from parents, conflicting with the Supreme Court’s Mirabelli emergency order on California gender-secrecy policies. Mirabelli put districts on notice that facilitating or concealing gender transitions from parents can violate parents’ First Amendment right to direct their children’s upbringing.
Staff face another mandate. Under the district’s “gender affirming” language rules, refusal to use preferred names and pronouns is framed as “an actionable disciplinary violation,” the letter states.
On facilities, the letter says male students who identify as girls may use girls’ restrooms and locker rooms, while girls who raise privacy and safety objections get steered elsewhere. Cosgrove’s team calls that a Title IX problem. Title IX is the federal law that bars sex discrimination in education and has long supported sex-separated intimate spaces.
The letter cites the First and 14th Amendments along with Title IX. It also points to the Justice Department’s nearly six months of investigations into Illinois school districts over “gender ideology” in curriculum and practices that open girls’ restrooms, locker rooms, and sports to males.
"These are not optional protections, and District 128 will be held accountable if it ignores them,"
Cosgrove said. The Liberty Justice Center’s PARENTS Initiative has already warned five states about gender secrecy policies. The letter demands written assurance that District 128 will amend the policies and train staff, or face legal action for violating federal civil rights and Title IX. Schaffer did not answer queries from Just the News.
In New Jersey, Chathams School District reached a settlement with Moms for Liberty after a two-month legal fight over gender-related policies. Thomas More Society senior counsel Christopher Ferrara, who represents the group, said the deal makes the old approach stay buried.
"Now that policy is gone for good, every teacher and counselor in the district will receive a copy"
Ferrara said of the settlement’s legally binding commitments. He added that it “must be absolutely clear that the policy will not return once the suit is over. And now it is clear.” Districts that refuse to follow Chathams’ lead, he said, “can explain themselves to a federal judge.”
The settlement says Chathams will not adopt the optional gender identity policies again unless federal or state law requires it, and only in a form “compliant” with Supreme Court precedent, specifically Mirabelli, Mahmoud, and the 1972 Yoder decision on parental control over education.
On Sept. 14, the board repealed and replaced its entire policy manual with mandatory policies from a new provider and did not readopt the optional gender identity rules. Those optional rules tracked a New Jersey School Boards Association model policy Chathams had adopted in 2024. A state appeals court had already held that such gender identity and expression policies are “optional,” giving districts room to rescind them.
The board announced settlement-related matters at its Oct. 12 meeting, nearly a month after the unanimous policy vote. Parties reached the agreement nine days before the Thomas More Society publicly touted it. Replacements had first been introduced at a July meeting, a month before Moms for Liberty sued.
Chathams officials painted the lawsuit as unnecessary. Board member Mike Ryan said members were already changing course and still faced intimidation.
"We don't deserve death threats that we're getting now every day, about a reckless lawsuit" filed by people who knew "we were changing the policy anyway,"
Ryan said at the Sept. 14 meeting, where two police officers were present.
Vice President Susan Ross read an opening statement rejecting the secrecy charge and calling the gender policy an “older” one being phased out.
"Our schools are not secretly making decisions about children behind their parents' backs,"
Ross said. Four months before the district settled, the board president had publicly claimed the Mirabelli emergency order was “not binding” on New Jersey public schools.
Moms for Liberty described a different experience for the families who pressed the case. CEO Tina Descovich said those parents paid a personal price for insisting schools treat them as primary educators.
"The parents behind this case endured doxxing and harassment simply for asking their school district to respect their role as their children’s primary educators,"
Descovich said.
Ferrara dismissed the board’s claim that a replacement draft introduced before the suit made litigation pointless. Binding clarity that the secrecy rules stay gone, he argued, is what the settlement finally delivered.
The Illinois letter and the New Jersey settlement both lean on the same recent Supreme Court signals. Mirabelli addressed California policies that kept gender transitions from parents. Mahmoud reinforced notice and opt-out rights when schools push contested sexual and gender content. Sports rulings from the high court have read “sex” in federal law as a real biological line, not a self-ID preference.
Related fights continue elsewhere. Cases in North Carolina and Washington have targeted notice and opt-out on transgender teachers and girls’ sports. Educator pronoun and firing disputes have moved through the 6th, 7th, and 4th Circuits, including a Maryland case with a pending Supreme Court petition. An Indiana K-12 teacher matter settled after the 7th Circuit sent it toward trial.
None of that is abstract for a parent packing a child’s bag for a class trip. If a district assigns beds by gender identity and hands families only preferred names, mothers and fathers cannot tell who is sleeping three feet away. If restrooms and locker rooms follow identity instead of sex, girls lose the private spaces the law long treated as ordinary. If staff must affirm preferred pronouns under threat of discipline, teachers lose speech rights and parents lose honest communication from the adults watching their kids.
Chathams chose a settlement with written commitments every teacher and counselor will see. District 128 has a warning letter on the superintendent’s desk and a demand for written assurance. Schaffer has not answered the press. Cosgrove’s message is that federal parental-rights and sex-discrimination protections are not suggestions.
Schools that hide roommate reality from parents are not practicing compassion. They are practicing concealment, and parents are done pretending otherwise.
