Virginia
Loudoun supervisor demands report on boy charged with assault in girl’s bathroom
Controversy over false reports that student was ‘gender fluid’ continues
A member of the Loudoun County, Va., Board of Supervisors has threatened to call for the withholding of funds from the county’s school system unless school officials release a report they hired a law firm to prepare as part of an investigation into the school system’s handling of two sexual assaults committed by a 15-year-old boy who was incorrectly identified as “gender fluid.”
When reports surfaced last October that the boy allegedly committed one of the two assaults in the girl’s bathroom at Stone Bridge High School in Ashburn, Va., in May 2021 while wearing a skirt, the revelation triggered a furious backlash against Virginia’s statewide transgender school policy that had been adopted by Loudoun County.
The policy, which is based on LGBTQ nondiscrimination legislation passed by the Virginia General Assembly, allows transgender and gender fluid students to use the bathroom and other school facilities that conform to their gender identity.
Loudoun school officials apologized for their handling of the two sexual assault incidents and commissioned an independent investigation by a law firm after news surfaced that they transferred the boy to another high school after he was charged in the first sexual assault without alerting the other school of the charges pending against him. The boy was charged with sexually assaulting another girl in a vacant classroom on Oct. 6, 2021, at Broad Run High School, also in Ashburn.
Loudoun school officials have declined to release the report conducted by the law firm Blankingship & Keith, saying to do so would violate attorney-client privilege and would release information about individuals involved in the sexual assault cases. The identity of the 15-year-old boy charged in the two cases and the two girls he allegedly assaulted have been withheld because they are considered juveniles under Virginia law.
But Loudoun County Supervisor Caleb Kershner, who is an attorney whose law firm represented the 15-year-old boy when his case came before a juvenile court judge last year and in January of this year, has demanded that the report be released.
He told WTOP News that in an upcoming joint meeting in February of the Board of Supervisors and the Loudoun County School Board, he would raise the issue of withholding school funding unless school officials release the report.
“Loudoun County Public Schools needs to keep our students safe, and parents need assurances that the mistake made by the LCPS and by the Commonwealth’s Attorney will never occur again,” he told WTOP. He was referring to concerns raised that the Commonwealth’s Attorney, who serves as the county prosecutor, also mishandled the case involving the teenager.
“The Board of Supervisors will be starting our budget process with LCPS this month, and I will be asking LCPS to release their independent sexual assault report as a condition of funding,” WTOP quoted him as saying.
In a little-noticed article last November, the British publication DailyMail.com published an interview with the 15-year-old boy’s mother, who said her son identifies as heterosexual and as a male, not as gender fluid or transgender.
LGBTQ activists have said the backlash against both the Virginia and Loudoun County transgender non-discrimination policies was fueled by what they have said all along was unsubstantiated claims that the boy was transgender or gender fluid.
His mother told DailyMail.com that her son occasionally wore a skirt “because it gave him attention he desperately needed and sought,” but he wore jeans and male clothes most of the time. She pointed out that law enforcement authorities disclosed that her son and the girl he was charged with assaulting in the school’s girl’s bathroom had consenting sex in the bathroom twice before the alleged assault.
Kershner’s call for the release of the school report on the two sexual assault incidents came three days before Loudoun County Juvenile Court Chief Judge Pamela Brooks reversed an earlier decision to place the 15-year-old boy on the Virginia sex offender registry for life.
WTOP News reports that the judge’s reversal of her earlier order placing the boy on the sex offender registry came in response to arguments by Kershner and members of Kirshner’s own law firm representing the boy at a Jan. 27 hearing. The lawyers argued that a sex offender registry designation should be limited to adults rather than a juvenile and would be harmful to the juvenile justice system’s objective of rehabilitation for juvenile offenders.
Brooks left in place her earlier decision on Jan. 12 to sentence the boy to supervised probation in a locked juvenile rehabilitation center until his 18th birthday, WTOP News reported.
Virginia
Gay Va. State Sen. Ebbin resigns for role in Spanberger administration
Veteran lawmaker will step down in February
Alexandria Democrat Adam Ebbin, who has served as an openly gay member of the Virginia Legislature since 2004, announced on Jan. 7 that he is resigning from his seat in the State Senate to take a job in the administration of Gov.-Elect Abigail Spanberger.
Since 2012, Ebbin has been a member of the Virginia Senate for the 39th District representing parts of Alexandria, Arlington, and Fairfax counties. He served in the Virginia House of Delegates representing Alexandria from 2004 to 2012, becoming the state’s first out gay lawmaker.
His announcement says he submitted his resignation from his Senate position effective Feb. 18 to join the Spanberger administration as a senior adviser at the Virginia Cannabis Control Authority.
“I’m grateful to have the benefit of Senator Ebbin’s policy expertise continuing to serve the people of Virginia, and I look forward to working with him to prioritize public safety and public health,” Spanberger said in Ebbin’s announcement statement.
She was referring to the lead role Ebbin has played in the Virginia Legislature’s approval in 2020 of legislation decriminalizing marijuana and the subsequent approval in 2021of a bill legalizing recreational use and possession of marijuana for adults 21 years of age and older. But the Virginia Legislature has yet to pass legislation facilitating the retail sale of marijuana for recreational use and limits sales to purchases at licensed medical marijuana dispensaries.
“I share Governor-elect Spanberger’s goal that adults 21 and over who choose to use cannabis, and those who use it for medical treatment, have access to a well-tested, accurately labeled product, free from contamination,” Ebbin said in his statement. “2026 is the year we will move cannabis sales off the street corner and behind the age-verified counter,” he said.
Virginia
LGBTQ groups to join Spanberger inaugural parade
Virginia Pride among more than 25 orgs to march in Jan.17 event
Virginia Gov.-Elect Abigail Spanberger’s inaugural committee announced on Jan. 2 that at least two LGBTQ organizations will be among more than 25 state-based organizations, including marching bands, that will participate in her inaugural parade on Jan. 17.
A statement released by the inaugural committee says the parade will take place immediately after Spanberger is sworn in as Virginia’s 75th governor and delivers her inaugural address in Richmond.
The statement lists the LGBTQ groups Virginia Pride and Diversity Richmond as two groups participating in the parade, although the two groups merged in 2021, with Virginia Pride becoming a project of Diversity Richmond. Among other things, Virginia Pride organizes Richmond’s annual LGBTQ Pride events.
“A display of the impressive talent and beauty of every corner of Virginia, our inaugural parade will be a celebration of all that makes our Commonwealth strong,” Spanberger said in the Jan. 2 statement. “I’m excited for attendees in the stands on Capitol Square and families watching together at home to see this incredible showing of Virginia pride,” she said.
James Millner, who serves as director of Virginia Pride, told the Washington Blade about 75 people are expected to join the Virginia Pride-Diversity Richmond contingent in the parade. He said among them will be members of other Virginia LGBTQ organizations.
“We’re going to invite our staff, our board, our volunteers, and our community partners to join us,” Millner said.
“We are thrilled and honored to have been invited to participate in Abigail Spanberger’s inauguration festivities,” he added. “I think this represents a marked change from the previous administration and demonstrates what she campaigned on – which is she sees the diversity of the Commonwealth as a strength that needs to be celebrated,” he said. “And we are very happy that she has invited us to represent the diversity of the commonwealth.”
Millner appeared to reflect on the sentiment of the large majority of Virginia’s LGBTQ community in its support for Democrat Spanberger over Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears in the November 2025 Virginia election and the end of incumbent GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s term in office on Jan. 17.
“After what we’ve been through with the Younkin administration, especially in its treatment of LGBTQ folks, especially transgender and nonconforming folks, I think we are all breathing easy and excited about what opportunities will exist in working with Abigail Spanberger,” he told the Blade.
Virginia
DOJ seeks to join lawsuit against Loudoun County over trans student in locker room
Three male high school students suspended after complaining about classmate
The Justice Department has asked to join a federal lawsuit against Loudoun County Public Schools over the way it handled the case of three male high school students who complained about a transgender student in a boys’ locker room.
The Washington Blade earlier this year reported Loudoun County public schools suspended the three boys and launched a Title IX investigation into whether they sexually harassed the student after they said they felt uncomfortable with their classmate in the locker room at Stone Bridge High School in Ashburn.
The parents of two of the boys filed a lawsuit against Loudoun County public schools in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria. The Richmond-based Founding Freedoms Law Center and America First Legal, which White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller co-founded, represent them.
The Justice Department in a Dec. 8 press release announced that “it filed legal action against the Loudoun County (Va.) School Board (Loudoun County) for its denial of equal protection based on religion.”
“The suit alleges that Loudoun County applied Policy 8040, which requires students and faculty to accept and promote gender ideology, to two Christian, male students in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” reads the press release.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in the press release said “students do not shed their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse gate.”
“Loudoun County’s decision to advance and promote gender ideology tramples on the rights of religious students who cannot embrace ideas that deny biological reality,” said Dhillon.
Outgoing Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and outgoing Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares in May announced an investigation into the case.
The Virginia Department of Education in 2023 announced the new guidelines for trans and nonbinary students for which Youngkin asked. Equality Virginia and other advocacy groups claim they, among other things, forcibly out trans and nonbinary students.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights in February launched an investigation into whether Loudoun County and four other Northern Virginia school districts’ policies in support of trans and nonbinary students violate Title IX and President Donald Trump’s executive order that prohibits federally funded educational institutions from promoting “gender ideology.”
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