The father of a Monroe high school volleyball player is suing the Monroe Public Schools and two administrators, saying his daughter's civil rights were violated when her team played against a transgender female athlete and that athlete used the same locker room as his daughter.
Filed in U.S. District Court in Detroit on Oct. 9 by parent Sean Lechner, the suit alleges Monroe's athletic director violated Title IX
.It says he failed to inform parents or players they would be facing off against a team that included a transgender girl on its roster — and that he allowed the transgender girl to use the same locker room as the Monroe girls.
Also named in the suit, the superintendent of Monroe Public Schools and the Michigan High School Athletic Association,
which governs high school sports in Michigan.
The game in question took place in 2025 when the Monroe girls played a school the suit identifies as Skyline High in Ann Arbor. According to the suit, a Skyline player was transgender.
In December, Lechner filed a Title IX complaint against the school district. During the announcement of that complaint, Lechner's daughter, Briley Lechner, who was a sophomore at the time, said last year that the incident "was definitely very devastating for all of us girls. … This person disguised themselves to look female. So when we found out after, weeks after, that there was another male in the same locker room as us as we were changing and also playing with us, it caught everyone off guard."
Briley Lechner said she did not see the transgender student in question in the locker room.
Title IX is a federal civil rights law that prohibits schools that receive federal funding from discrimination based on sex.
The lawsuit represents another in a series of complaints involving transgender girls who play on sports team for girls. The subject has been a rallying cry for President Donald Trump and many other Republicans who have worked to strip away the rights of transgender people. They argue that they need to keep girls' sports safe for girls and that transgender girls have strength advantages that could be a safety hazard for cis girls, or girls who identify as the gender they were assigned at birth.
In Michigan the transgender student-athlete population is a small one. The Michigan High School Athletic Association, which reviews waiver requests for trans athletes on a case-by-case basis, granted two such waivers during the 2024-25 school year.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Monroe dad says daughter shared locker room with trans girl; files suit
