South Carolina – South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson has become involved in a growing national argument about how schools should handle overnight stays for children during field trips and sports events. His involvement is due to a Colorado school district’s policy that puts students in shared rooms based on gender identity instead of biological sex. This rule recently survived a legal challenge in federal court.
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Wilson, along with 21 other states, submitted a friend-of-the-court brief asking an appeals court to reverse the rejection of a case filed by Christian parents who were against the policy. The parents said that the district’s policy makes females share private rooms with biological males, but a federal district judge agreed with the school system.
Wilson added that this topic is very important to him since it has to do with basic fairness and safety for young women.
“As the father of a teenage daughter who plays sports, I can’t imagine her going to an out-of-town sporting event and rooming with a biological boy,” Attorney General Wilson said. “Protecting girls in private spaces is common sense and one that I will never quit fighting for.”
The multistate group that supports the appeal says that the Colorado ruling punishes families that have traditional Christian views on gender and sex. They say that the decision makes the law unfair by ignoring the concerns of parents who don’t agree with housing assignments based on gender identification. The brief also says that the school system is wrong to follow recommendations of pediatric gender dysphoria that the attorneys general say are outdated and unreliable.
Wilson has been involved in arguments about gender policies in schools and sports before. In September, he and 27 other states asked the U.S. Supreme Court to confirm that states have the authority to make rules that say girls’ sports teams can only have biological females on them. The motion comes after the Fourth and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeals stopped identical laws from going into effect in West Virginia and Idaho.
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In 2022, South Carolina passed its own version of this kind of law. The Save Women’s Sports Act says that only biological sex at birth can determine who can play sports. Wilson has said several times that the measure is needed to keep school sports fair and keep standards clear.
In the Colorado lodging case, Wilson’s brief was backed by the attorneys general of Florida, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming, as well as the Arizona state legislature.
Their appeal is only one more step in a growing national discussion about gender policy in schools. This argument shows no signs of slowing down as states continue to stake out sharply different positions.
