On a school trip, their daughter’s assigned bedmate was a boy

While getting ready for bed on a school trip more than 1,500 miles from home, a fifth grade girl discovered that her bedmate was a male student. The 11-year-old girl went to the restroom to call her mother, who had traveled along on the school trip and paid to room with the mother of another student.

At first, Serena Wailes didn’t believe her daughter could be staying with a boy while on a school trip. “We didn’t even know that it was a possibility,” she told me.

When Serena and Joseph Wailes signed their daughter up for the trip, school officials from Jefferson County Public Schools (Jeffco) in Colorado assured them she would room with four girls and that the girls would room on one floor and the boys on another. Unbeknownst to the family, a school policy made an exception for students who say they are of the opposite sex.

Wailes said her daughter was terrified but also didn’t want to make the other student feel uncomfortable. Wailes had to confront school officials twice before they moved the male student to another room.

“I just couldn’t imagine that we would be put in a situation like that without having any prior notification,” she said.

Last Wednesday, the Waileses, along with three other couples who have children in the district, filed an opening brief at the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. They contend that the school’s policy violates parents’ fundamental right to make decisions about the upbringing and education of their children.

The parents first filed a lawsuit against Jeffco in September 2024. But this August, a lower court dismissed the parents’ claims and said they lacked standing because Jeffco supposedly “freely grants accommodations to all.” The parents appealed later that month.

All of the families—the Waileses, Bret and Susanne Roller, Rob and Jade Perlman, and a fourth family—believe that God created people as either male or female and that this cannot change.

Wailes said she didn’t know about Jeffco’s policy until the legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom found it filed under the school’s transgender policies, not its overnight ones. Jeffco’s policy states that in most cases, “students who are transgender should be assigned to share overnight accommodations with other students that share the student’s gender identity consistently asserted at school.” The Waileses later learned they couldn’t opt out of this policy. Officials also did not have to notify parents if their children would sleep overnight alongside the opposite sex.

The Waileses sent letters to officials asking for opt-outs from the policy, but they say the school repeatedly denied their request. Jeffco only promised them that in the future, the school wouldn’t “knowingly assign students of different birth sexes to share a bed.” But the brief points out that Jeffco assigns students to rooms, not beds.

According to the lawsuit, the Rollers sent their sixth grade son on a four-day trip to the camp Outdoor Lab, which Jeffco said was part of the curriculum and that it expected all students to attend. Their son was supposed to stay in a cabin with other sixth grade boys and a male counselor. But when he arrived, he learned that his counselor was an 18-year-old female student who identified as “non-binary”—though she competed as a female in 4-H competitions the Rollers attended.

The female counselor stayed in the same cabin where the sixth grade boys slept and dressed. She was also required to monitor their showers to control hot water use. According to the brief, the showers had only thin curtains that provided minimal privacy. Because of his discomfort with the counselor’s presence, the Rollers’ son did not shower during the trip and changed clothes inside his sleeping bag.

When Susanne Roller picked up her son, who didn’t have access to his phone on the trip, the first thing he told her was, “I had a girl in my cabin.” She confronted his principal, who offered her no way to avoid a similar situation in the future.

The Perlmans object to the policy due to their beliefs and because their daughter was sexually harassed in middle school. Now in high school, she regularly attends overnight trips with the varsity basketball team. The Perlmans face an “impermissible choice,” according to the brief: “either [forgo] the benefits of their daughter traveling with her team or accept that Jeffco could room her with a male—without notice.”

The fourth couple, who joined the suit in February, said that Jeffco officials ignored more than eight accommodation requests from them regarding the policy. When their daughter went to the Outdoor Lab in January, the couple resorted to renting a nearby Airbnb and picking up and dropping off their daughter at the camp each day. Because their daughter missed out on the overnight portion of her trip, she faced embarrassment and stigmatization by other students, the brief noted.

According to the brief, the four couples aren’t asking Jeffco to “scrap” its policy but to provide an accommodation that “will allow their children to participate fully in overnight activities and not penalize them for their religious beliefs.”

Jeffco did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The lawsuit contends the district’s policy infringes on the constitutional right of parents to direct the upbringing, education, and care of their children. Additionally, it argues the policy violates the students’ right to privacy by failing to inform them they might be roomed with the opposite sex.

Noel Sterett, an attorney with ADF who is helping represent the couples, said that Jeffco’s policy leaves parents in the dark and ignores Supreme Court precedent. He said the lower court’s dismissal ignored a June 2025 Supreme Court case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, that shows parents have the right to opt out of situations like these. In Mahmoud, the justices found that Maryland parents have the right to pull elementary-age children out of classes with LGBTQ-themed storybooks that are offensive to parents’ religious beliefs.

Sterett also noted that children have a right to bodily privacy and shouldn’t be put in a situation that catches them off guard like this.

“Schools offer these wonderful formative opportunities,” Sterett said. “No parent should have to exclude their child, or no child should be excluded from these opportunities, because of a school district’s refusal to accommodate them.”

Wailes added that her kids shouldn’t have to suffer because of Jeffco’s policy, which enables school officials to make decisions for students without consulting the parents.

“Unfortunately, Jeffco has made an assumption that they understand what’s best for our children and are trying to take parents out of the equation,” Wailes said. “We’re the ones who are there for our kids.”