COLORADO PARENTS SUE LOCAL SCHOOL DISTRICT FOR ALLOWING MALE STUDENTS TO ROOM WITH FEMALES ON CLASS TRIPS

National Review

 

Colorado Parents Sue Local School District for Allowing Male Students to Room with Females on Class Trips

By Kamden Mulder

November 24, 2025 10:44 AM

 

A group of Colorado parents is suing their local school district for allowing transgender-identifying male students to room with female students on overnight trips

 

The case, Wailes v. Jefferson County Public Schools, was brought by Alliance Defending Freedom on behalf of four Jefferson County families who are demanding that the district respect “families’ free exercise, bodily privacy, and parental rights.”

 

The Jefferson County schools’ roommate policy allows students to be “assigned to share overnight accommodations with other students that share the student’s gender identity.”

 

That policy resulted in the eleven-year-old daughter of Joe and Serena Wailes being forced to not only share a room with a male classmate on a 2023 trip to Washington, D.C., but to share a bed.

 

Wailes, who was a chaperone on the trip, explained that her daughter hid in the bathroom and called her to explain what was happening after she discovered that one of her three roommates was male. “Her voice is shaky, and she says, ‘Mom, something just happened. I need to tell you about it,’” Serena Wailes told National Review in 2023, after the rooming incident occurred.

 

Parents were not made aware of the policy before the trip and were instead told that boys and girls would room on separate floors, Noel Sterett, senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, told National Review.

 

“The Wailes case was a situation where both the eleven-year-old girl and the parents found out as she was getting ready for bed that the student she was about to climb into bed with was a boy,” Sterett said. “The policy was requiring school officials not to disclose the gender identity of any other students. So that’s where the school district is. In other words, they’re promising, assuring parents one thing, but that’s misleading, because when Jeffco or the school district says ‘boys and girls,’ what it means is those who identify as such.”

 

The school was able to conceal its policy by eliding the difference between sex and gender identity in communicating with parents, according to Sterett.

 

“They were using the same vocabulary, but unbeknownst to the parents, they were essentially using a different dictionary. So most of the parents came away thinking, ‘I don’t have anything to worry about, because you’ve already told me that boys and girls will be separated.'” Sterett said. “And so those assurances basically reflect a reality that the school district no longer honors.”

 

Jefferson County Public Schools did not respond to a request for comment.

 

A lower court first dismissed the parents’ suit on the grounds that the plaintiffs did not present a claim for which relief could be granted and that a parent’s right to raise their child does not extend to school policy and curriculum. Sterett explained that because the district court rejected their parental rights claim, they are now taking the case to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. Alliance Defending Freedom filed its opening brief in the case on Wednesday.

 

Along with the Joe and Serena Wailes, three other families joined the case, all with similar grievances.

 

The Roller family, for example, discovered that an 18-year-old student, whom they knew to be female, was assigned to their son’s cabin as a chaperone on a middle school trip. The female counselor was responsible for monitoring the boys’ showers to ensure they complied with water conservation rules. Unbeknownst to the Rollers, the student identified as non-binary and was therefore allowed to serve as a counselor for the boys.

 

Under Jefferson County’s transgender students policy, “Jeffco will assign a boy who identifies as a girl to a girls’ room (and vice versa) without notice to, or consent from, their parents. That’s what happened to the Waileses’ daughter and the Rollers’ son,” the brief reads.

 

The Perlmans’ daughter is on the varsity basketball team, and with participation in the sport comes the possibility of overnight stays for away games. The family requested that their daughter not be roomed with any biological male students, in part because of religious beliefs and their daughter’s experience with sexual assault at a Jefferson County middle school. The school refused to respect their request.

 

The Brinkmans’s young daughter was ostracized from social activities on a school trip after the district would not assign her to a female-only room. The family requested that their daughter only be roomed with female students, but rather than grant the request, the school offered “day participation,” in which the student is dropped off and picked up by parents rather than staying the night with fellow students.

 

“Parents, not government bureaucrats, have the right and responsibility to direct the upbringing and education of their children, and that includes making informed decisions to protect their children’s privacy,” Kate Anderson, ADF senior counsel and director of the ADF Center for Parental Rights, said. “This fundamental right is especially vital for all parents who wish to raise their children according to their religious values and protect their children’s bodily privacy.”

 

Even though the Wailes were promised that boys and girls would be kept on separate floors during the trip, their daughter’s experience proved otherwise. Before taking any legal action, the Wailes family worked with the ADF to send a letter to Jefferson County schools, trying to convince the district to create a policy that protects all student preferences, not just transgender students. At the time, the school told National Review that a private company facilitated the room assignment process, and the school was unaware that the student was a boy.

 

The school policy further affirms parents’ concerns, noting that under no circumstance “shall a student who is transgender be required to share a room with students whose gender identity conflicts with their own.” It does not, however, “provide a similar guarantee for students who object—for religious or privacy reasons—to sharing a room with the opposite sex,” the brief reads.

 

“Jefferson County Public Schools claims to ‘freely grant accommodations to all,’ yet they will not offer equal accommodations to religious students to access educational opportunities without sacrificing their bodily privacy,” Anderson said.

 

Send a tip to the news team at NR.