The Oregon School District is allowing a student who was born male and identifies as female to use girls’ restrooms and locker rooms even after that student was involved in a violent altercation with female students just days earlier.
In an email to a parent about the incident, Superintendent Shannon Anderson cited district policy as well as two rulings from the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in confirming that the student would still be allowed to use girls’ facilities.
“The Seventh Circuit has affirmed that denying a transgender student access to the restroom matching their gender identity constitutes sex discrimination under Title IX and violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution,” she wrote. “The district must follow Seventh Circuit case law.”
Earlier this month, female students at Oregon High School circulated a Snapchat photo they said shows the student leaving a girls’ restroom. The photo, taken in a school hallway near drinking fountains, shows a person in a white cap, white shirt and gray pants standing in a restroom doorway.
The caption reads: “It just went in the girls bathroom.” Parents said girls took the photo while waiting in the hall because they did not feel safe entering until the student left.
Anderson brushed aside those concerns in her email, pointing to said the student would still be allowed to Oregon School Board Policy 157, which the district interprets as barring discrimination based on gender identity and allowing students to use the restroom matching their gender identity.
“We also have individual bathrooms available in each school that any student is welcome to use at any time,” she added.
Parents told the Heartland Post that the girls who felt uncomfortable, not the biological male, were told to use those individual restrooms. They also said the girls were urged to seek counseling if they were so uncomfortable sharing a restroom with a male student.
Those parents added that the student has a history of aggression and violent confrontation that culminated in a wild fight at the school September 17 that was captured on video and circulated widely on social media after it was posted by Gays Against Groomers.
“Parents had already raised alarms about him using the girls’ bathroom and locker room,” the group noted in its post on X.
The Oregon School District began the 2026-27 year without a sworn school resource officer. The Village of Oregon and the district did not renew their School Resource Officer (SRO) agreement before September 1. Police Chief Jennifer Pagenkopf said negotiations stalled over the officer’s authority and parental notification after two investigations last year involving alleged faculty-student misconduct.
The district hired instead hired a retired officer as a school security guard and said Oregon police would still respond to emergencies. The plan was highly controversial, as 91% of families and 94% of students supported having a sworn SRO at Oregon High School.
The district has not released a discipline file for the male student involved in the incident or a public incident report. Anderson’s email did not mention the fight at all and offered only vague platitudes in response to parental concerns.
“We certainly respect the views and values of all students and families, and seek to ensure that all students and staff are treated respectfully,” she wrote.
Similar disputes over biological males using women’s restrooms have erupted across Wisconsin in recent months. The U.S. Department of Education opened a Title IX investigation into the New Richmond School District after reports surfaced that the district was letting students use restrooms and other intimate facilities according to gender identity rather than sex.
Parents and students told school board members in January that males were using the girls’ restroom and administrators would not give clear answers about protecting girls’ privacy.
A student later testified she had stopped using school bathrooms because of boys in those spaces. In February, a proposal to keep bathrooms and locker rooms separated by biological sex failed, with only two of seven board members voting yes. Parents later sued the district in federal court.
In the Sun Prairie Area School District, an 18-year-old male student identifying as female allegedly showered naked in the girls’ locker room in front of four freshman girls in 2023. The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty filed a Title IX complaint, and the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights opened an investigation later that year.
WILL filed a Title IX complaint against Westosha Central High School last year after a male student identifying as transgender used the girls’ locker room. Girls said they had to change in front of him or risk tardies and other penalties. One family pulled their daughter from the school as a result of the policy.
