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The Obama administration's interpretation of existing laws to protect transgender students has drawn mixed reception in the courts. | Getty Feds win round in legal fight over Obama transgender bathroom policy

The Obama administration has won an early round in the legal battle over its drive to require local schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond to the students' gender identity.

On Tuesday, a federal magistrate in Chicago recommended that a judge reject a preliminary injunction in which a group of students and parents sought to block enforcement of that policy and reverse local policies allowing a transgender girl to use girls' locker rooms at a high school in Palatine, Illinois.

“High school students do not have a constitutional right not to share restrooms or locker rooms with transgender students whose sex assigned at birth is different than theirs,” Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Gilbert wrote in an 82-page report. “In addition, sharing a restroom or locker room with a transgender student does not create a severe, pervasive, or objectively offensive hostile environment under Title IX given the privacy protections [the school district] has put in place in those facilities and the alternative facilities available to students who do not want to share a restroom or locker room with a transgender student.”

Gilbert also said he doubted the plaintiffs’ claim that the Education Department failed to abide by the Administrative Procedure Act when interpreting Title IX to include protections for transgender students.

U.S. District Court Judge Jorge Alonso, who is overseeing the case, is not legally required to follow Gilbert’s recommendations. Further litigation before Alonso is all but certain. However, district court judges usually adopt the preliminary rulings from magistrates.

The Obama administration’s interpretation of existing civil rights laws to provide protections for transgender students has received a mixed reception in the courts.

The Richmond, Va.-based 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 in April that the administration acted within its authority when it used such reasoning to order a Gloucester County, Virginia, school to accommodate a transgender boy seeking to use the boys’ bathroom. The Supreme Court stayed that ruling temporarily pending a decision by the justices about whether to review the case.

In August, a federal district court judge in Texas issued a nationwide injunction against the administration, blocking Education Department and Labor Department enforcement of civil rights laws to protect transgender individuals. That judge has said he’s considering narrowing or clarifying the scope of his injunction, but he has not yet done so.