In Doe v. Mukwonago Area School District et al., a Wisconsin federal trial court is allowing a Plaintiff’s equal protection claim to proceed, challenging a board of education’s policy to deny the student access to the bathroom of the gender the student identifies with. The case began in 2023, when a transgender student by and through her mother sued a Wisconsin school district after it adopted Policy 5514, requiring students to use bathrooms and locker rooms based on sex assigned at birth. The student alleges the policy, which barred her from using the girls’ facilities, violated Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The student initially obtained a preliminary injunction allowing her to use the girls’ facilities. The injunction was appealed, and in 2025 the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court’s injunction, finding that evidentiary hearings are not mandatory without material disputes and declined to overturn precedent. Then, on its own motion, the Seventh Circuit withdrew it opinion in light of recent Supreme Court precedent.
After the appeal, the student transferred to a private school and withdrew her request for prospective relief; thus, the Seventh Circuit did not issue a new ruling. The case now centers on whether the district violated her rights in 2023 and whether she may recover monetary damages.
The district moved to dismiss the remaining claims, arguing that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions in United States v. Skrmetti and West Virginia v. B.P.J., the transgender athletics case we previously covered, undermined Seventh Circuit precedent governing school bathroom policies. The court disagreed, finding that neither decision displaced existing Seventh Circuit precedent because Policy 5514 expressly classifies students based on sex assigned at birth. The court nevertheless dismissed the student’s Title IX claim because she no longer seeks injunctive relief and emotional-distress damages are not recoverable under Title IX. The student may seek to amend her complaint if she can allege other compensable damages.
The student’s Equal Protection claim will proceed. The court found that Policy 5514 constitutes a sex-based classification subject to intermediate scrutiny but did not decide whether the policy is constitutional. The case will now proceed to determine whether the district can show that the policy is substantially related to an important governmental objective.
The court also permitted limited discovery into the district’s policies, communications, complaints, and treatment of other transgender students from January 1 through July 11, 2023, finding the information potentially relevant to the district’s justification for the policy.
The decision is important for school districts because it clarifies that, at least at this stage of the litigation, recent Supreme Court decisions involving transgender medical treatment and school athletics have not displaced existing Seventh Circuit precedent governing bathroom access. According to the court, a policy expressly assigning bathroom access according to sex remains a sex-based classification subject to intermediate scrutiny, meaning a district must identify an important governmental objective and demonstrate that its policy is substantially related to achieving that objective. Whether Mukwonago can make that showing remains to be decided as the case proceeds.
In such a complex legal environment, contact any of our student/special education attorneys for guidance.
Source: Doe #1 v. Mukwonago Area School District et. al., Case No. 23-cv-876 (E.D. Wis. Sept. 8, 2026)
