School districts, trans kids pay for anti-trans lawsuits cropping up across U.S.

Editor’s note: This article includes mention of suicide and self-harm.

For Pat Green, facing a tense school board meeting on behalf of transgender students last year was the “same old, same old.”

The Willowbrook resident spent 2012 through 2014 in school board meetings for Palatine, Lockport, Naperville and elsewhere speaking up for trans youth. His son, who is trans, was once hospitalized after months of bullying culminated in him being shoved into a locker; his injuries required four staples in his head.

“I remember the fear of wondering if I was going to lose my son,” Green said.

Green started attending meetings again last year when at least six school districts across Illinois, including Chicago Public Schools, saw federal complaints and lawsuits from parents working with conservative groups over allowing trans students access to bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their genders.

Valley View 365U was one of three hit with federal civil rights complaints filed by Naperville-based anti-trans group Awake Illinois. The group, which says it confronts “overreaching ‘woke’ policies,” alleged the districts’ policies violated Title IX, which protects students from sex-based discrimination in federally funded education programs.

“For God’s sake, don’t go backward,” Green told the Romeoville school board last year. “I almost lost the most precious gift God ever gave me.”

The district kept its policies, but others could face the same fight, which can be costly. A Sun-Times/Uncloseted Media analysis found one Chicago-area school district paid nearly $360,000 to fend off the aftermath of a federal complaint last year.

A federal investigation is ongoing, despite Illinois law explicitly protecting trans students’ access to bathrooms and locker rooms.

Meanwhile, Awake Illinois filed five more federal complaints last month against many of the schools targeted in 2025. CPS Supt. Macquline King appeared under subpoena before the U.S. House education committee last week to defend the district’s policies regarding trans students against Republican accusations of “compromising student privacy rights” and the Trump administration maintains its threat to cut federal funding for schools with such policies.

“I’m really scared about the way things are right now,” Green said. “It’s meant to make us go backward.”

‘Manufactured controversy’

Deerfield District 109’s case was the first to draw significant media attention last year, becoming a model for conservative groups to push a federal government known for its anti-trans policies to investigate school districts.

Documents obtained by the Sun-Times and Uncloseted Media show by May, the district paid $358,051 to navigate the legal challenges and related expenses — equivalent to 37% of the federal funds it received last year, or four average annual teachers’ salaries.

That included $255,038 for legal defense, $55,335 for communications consultants, $30,551 in school security upgrades, $7,476 for additional police and private security, $4,000 for extra staff to screen threats and other costs associated with accommodating the crowds at school board meetings.

It began with a series of fiery school board meetings last year after Deerfield parent Nicole Georgas said her cisgender daughter refused to change for gym class after seeing another student, a trans girl, in the locker room. Georgas alleged administrators made her daughter change in front of them and the other student.

“My daughter refused to take part in having her privacy being violated,” Georgas said at a school board meeting last March.

In March 2025, she filed a federal civil rights complaint with the Department of Justice; conservative legal groups Defense of Freedom Institute and Liberty Justice Center cited her story in complaints to the Department of Education.

The school district denied the allegations and said its policies aligned with state law, which requires schools to allow trans students to use facilities aligned with their gender.

“[The suit] attempts to recast a lawful, gender-inclusive school policy into claims of sex-based discrimination and constitutional injury,” the district wrote in court filings. “Stripped of rhetoric, Plaintiff’s allegations against the District fail as a matter of law.”

Georgas declined to comment. The family of the trans student couldn’t be reached for comment.

The Defense of Freedom Institute said the complaint “is just one example” of its work to safeguard civil rights in schools, but didn’t answer questions about the investigation.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights repeated Georgas’ claim that students were “allegedly forced” to change in front of administrators and the trans student.

Conservative legal group America First Legal — which has waged several legal attacks against the LGBTQ+ community — urged a criminal investigation into district employees in a letter to the DOJ, saying the allegations “rise to criminal conspiracy against rights.” It didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Georgas went on to make appearances on Laura Ingraham‘s and Charlie Kirk’s shows. A reporter asked the White House about her complaint. She sued the Deerfield district in November seeking an injunction, punitive damages and money for emotional distress.

Georgas — represented by her pro-bono lawyer, Republican congressional candidate and Naperville resident Ajay Gupta — has moved to make her lawsuit a class action as her daughter graduates middle school, which could void the case due to a lack of remedy. Gupta didn’t respond to a request for comment.

More than a year later, district officials said they haven’t heard from the Department of Education, which didn’t respond to a request for updates on the investigations.

Bolingbrook Pride founder Allaina Humphreys says legal efforts like the one waged against Deerfield District 109 are wasteful.

“When schools are forced to fight lawsuits over issues that aren’t a problem for the vast majority of people, it’s a waste of taxpayer dollars. Straight up monetarily, why are we spending so much time prosecuting and persecuting a minuscule part of the population?” she said.

‘Attempt to divide’

A month after Georgas made her claims, Awake Illinois, the Defense of Freedom Institute and the Liberty Justice Center filed similar Title IX complaints against the Illinois State Board of Education, Valley View School District 365U and Naperville 203.

Awake emerged in the northern suburbs during the COVID-19 pandemic to fight masking and trans students’ rights, and now calls for the repeal of the SAFE-T Act, which abolished cash bail in Illinois, and supports the feds’ increased immigration enforcement.

“Federal law reigns supreme,” the group’s founder, Shannon Adcock, said at a Naperville district meeting three months after filing the first of her complaints. “Only recently have trans cultists tried to contest [Title IX].”

Adcock didn’t respond to requests for comment.

An ongoing suit spawned from the allegations has cost Valley View District 365 nearly $23,000.

Deerfield parent Elizabeth Castro said she was shocked to look around the country and see the same “manufactured controversy” after attending meetings in her child’s district last year.

At least 18 education institutions across 10 states face similar Title IX investigations, including Wisconsin, California, Kansas, Colorado, North Carolina, New Hampshire and Washington. Some led to the Trump administration attempting to cut federal funds from public schools in Minnesota, Virginia and Maine.

“You realize it’s so much bigger when you see all the communities around the country that have dealt with this exact same pattern,” Castro said.

State Sen. Andrew Chesney demanded Hononegah Community High School in Rockton, Illinois “stop the insanity.”

But students hadn’t been required to change for gym class for years, the school said. It “never received a complaint” from a parent or student because the alleged incident “did not occur.”

“Those who created this false claim on social media were well aware it was untrue and advanced it as true in an attempt to divide our community,” school officials wrote last year.

More than a year later, Chesney said it was the last time his office heard about the issue, but maintains that schools should fall in line with the Trump administration even under threat of losing state funding — which accounts for the majority of most Illinois school budgets.

“There’s no common ground and there’s no compromise,” Chesney said.

According to Liz Mikitarian, a retired kindergarten teacher and the founder of Stop Moms for Liberty, the coordinated efforts to undermine the rights of trans students in Illinois mimic a strategy playing out nationwide.

“They feed these outlets that produce more hate,” Mikitarian, who lives in Florida, told Uncloseted Media and the Sun-Times. “It’s a model of misinforming people and making them afraid of something, and that works, especially when it’s people’s children. … [But] it’s a grift, and people are catching on.”

Policy matters

King’s opening remarks at the congressional hearing asserted CPS’ policies were both legal and necessary for the district’s students.

“The only way to truly serve every student is to understand and embrace what makes each student and community unique,” King said.

A trans teen who moved to Bloomington from Florida in 2024 was beaten by a fellow classmate, leaving her with a concussion, a potential traumatic brain injury and PTSD, according to a lawsuit filed late last year, Uncloseted Media reported.

She isn’t alone.

A 2021 survey from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champagne found Illinois’ trans high school students were bullied at nearly three times the rate of their cisgender peers; 19% of the 1,116 trans students surveyed said they faced physical violence.

“The distinct experiences of transgender youth should be considered in school policies and violence prevention programs,” the researchers wrote in their conclusion.

The enforcement of policies protecting trans students can inform school culture, according to Corey Lascano, the Chicago Teachers’ Union’s LGBTQ+ coordinator.

It’s often “the only place where [trans youth] feel safe to be themselves,” Lascano said.

A 2025 Trevor Project survey found LGBTQ+ youth who live in unaccepting communities attempted suicide at three times the rate those in accepting communities did; 10% of LGBTQ+ youth attempt suicide overall.

“It’s a school culture issue if kids are safe to bully each other over gender identity,” Lascano said. “When you already exist in a world where there are no safe places and your government is adding to that, it’s dehumanizing.”

Green, the Willowbrook parent, said the slurs his son faced daily led to self-harm, suicidal thoughts and slipping grades.

“From the time he was born, he had this light, but by the end of freshman year, that light had turned into dread,” Green said. “It was truly a matter of life or death.”

His son transferred to Hinsdale South in 2015, where he was able to use the boys’ bathroom and his name. The school addressed bullying seriously.

“The light came back,” Green said.

Samantha Donndelinger reports for Uncloseted Media, an investigative LGBTQ-focused news publication.