Some Palatine-Schaumburg High School District 211 students and their parents are suing the school district and U.S. Department of Education in federal court, claiming an agreement allowing a transgender student limited access to the girls locker room at Fremd High School violates their civil rights.

The suit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Chicago, asks a judge to order District 211 to reverse its policy allowing the student access to the girls locker room and rule that the Department of Education is misinterpreting Title IX — the federal law barring sex discrimination in education — to cover gender identity.

“The Locker Room Agreement and Restroom Policy, which open the girls’ restrooms and locker rooms to biological males, is harassment based on the girls’ sex,” the suit alleges. “Moreover, both male and female student plaintiffs experience humiliation, anxiety, intimidation, fear, apprehension, stress, degradation, and loss of dignity as a result of the Locker Room Agreement and/or Restroom Policy permitting the opposite sex to be in locker rooms and restrooms designated for their biological sex.”

The lead plaintiffs in the suit include a group called Parents for Privacy, which formed last year to oppose the district’s policy regarding the transgender student at Fremd, along with 13 students identified only by their initials. According to the suit, 63 of Parents for Privacy’s 136 members are students, 26 of whom either currently attend Fremd or will beginning next year.

“We do sympathize with children who have difficult personal issues to deal with, to work through,” Parents for Privacy member Vicki Wilson said. “But young men shouldn’t be permitted to deal with those issues in intimate settings with young girls, some