## Facts

- A public school district allowed transgender students to use multi-user restrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity through an individualized process involving counselors and administrators.
- School facilities included multi-user bathrooms with individual stalls and several single-user restrooms available to all students.
- Cisgender students sued, alleging that encountering transgender students in sex-segregated restrooms and locker rooms violated a constitutional right to bodily privacy, created a Title IX hostile environment, and supported Pennsylvania tort claims (including intrusion upon seclusion).
- The record contained no allegation that any transgender student used facilities to harass, peep, expose themselves, or otherwise engage in improper conduct; plaintiffs objected to transgender students’ “mere presence.”
- Plaintiffs sought a preliminary injunction requiring the district to limit use of sex-segregated facilities strictly by sex assigned at birth; the district court denied relief.

## Issues

1. Whether cisgender students were likely to succeed on a Due Process bodily-privacy claim based on transgender students’ use of restrooms and locker rooms consistent with gender identity.
2. Whether plaintiffs were likely to succeed on Title IX claims alleging a sex-based hostile environment or discrimination against cisgender students.
3. Whether plaintiffs were likely to succeed on Pennsylvania tort claims (including intrusion upon seclusion) premised on transgender students’ presence in sex-segregated facilities.
4. Whether plaintiffs satisfied the preliminary-injunction requirements, including irreparable harm, balance of equities, and public interest.

## Decision

- The Third Circuit affirmed the denial of the preliminary injunction.
- Plaintiffs failed to show a likelihood of success on the merits of the constitutional, Title IX, or state-law claims.
- Plaintiffs failed to show irreparable harm; their asserted injuries were largely subjective discomfort, mitigated by privacy options (stalls and single-user facilities).
- The balance of harms and public interest favored the district, given evidence that exclusion from appropriate facilities poses serious mental and physical health risks to transgender students and the district’s interest in preventing discrimination.

## Legal Principles

- Students have a recognized privacy interest in avoiding unwanted exposure of their unclothed or partially clothed bodies, but the interest is context-dependent and not absolute in the school setting.
- In multi-user school restrooms and locker rooms, where some exposure to other students is expected and privacy measures exist, the presence of transgender students—without misconduct—is not, by itself, a constitutional privacy violation.
- Title IX hostile-environment liability requires conduct that is severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive; mere presence of transgender students in facilities aligned with gender identity, absent harassing behavior, does not meet that standard.
- A Title IX disparate-treatment theory requires denial of access or materially adverse treatment; a policy that maintains cisgender students’ access while preventing discrimination against transgender students does not, on this record, likely constitute unlawful discrimination against cisgender students.
- Under Pennsylvania intrusion-upon-seclusion standards, plaintiffs must show an intentional intrusion that would be highly offensive to a reasonable person; mere presence of transgender students in shared facilities, given the setting and available privacy protections, is unlikely to satisfy that element.
- A preliminary injunction requires (at minimum) likelihood of success on the merits and irreparable harm; failure on these factors warrants denial.

## Conclusion

The court held that the challenged school policy likely did not violate cisgender students’ constitutional privacy rights, Title IX, or Pennsylvania tort law because the claim rested on transgender students’ mere presence in shared facilities with privacy safeguards and no alleged misconduct; plaintiffs also failed to show irreparable harm, and equitable factors favored maintaining the policy.


Doe v. Boyertown Area Sch. Dist., 897 F.3d 518 (3d Cir. 2018)