A panel of judges at the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments Tuesday in a lawsuit challenging JeffCo Public School’s policy of assigning students to overnight accommodations on school trips based on gender identity.

The lawsuit, filed in 2024, alleged that the policy infringes on parents’ religious freedom by denying them notice or a meaningful opt‑out when room assignments could place their children with students of a different sex. The plaintiffs sought an injunction to require the district to notify parents ahead of trips and honor requests that their children not be placed in those accommodations.

“They just want their children to have the same opportunity to participate fully in overnight activities and athletic trips without being excluded, penalized, or isolated,” the plaintiff’s attorney Noel Sterett from Alliance Defending Freedom told judges Tuesday.

When plaintiffs Joe and Serena Wailes allowed their 11-year-old daughter to attend a district-sponsored trip to Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., they were told their daughter would be rooming with three other fifth-grade girls, Alliance Defending Freedom said.

After their daughter was assigned to share the same room and bed with a boy on an overnight school trip, the Wailes sent a demand letter to Jeffco Public Schools to address its policy that states all school-sponsored trips will assign rooms by gender identity rather than sex. That is a policy many parents did not know about, the legal outfit said previously. Two other Colorado families joined the lawsuit.

A federal district court dismissed the lawsuit in August 2025, finding the policy served a “compelling state interest in protecting transgender students from discrimination.” The court also wrote that parents “have no right to replace public education with their own personal views nor a right to control each and every aspect of their children’s education and oust the state’s authority over that subject.”

JCSD attorney Eric Olson told the appeals court that granting the parents’ request would require the district to track intimate personal details about students, effectively compelling the identification of transgender children.

“What plaintiffs seek is unprecedented, in terms of changing how the school district interacts with all other students, because of their free exercise concerns,” Olson said. “The stigma goes far in the other direction by forcing the identification of people who are different, which is what the net result of this policy is.”

The parents appealed, asking the appellate court to reverse the dismissal, approve the injunction and send the case back to the district court.

During Tuesday’s hearing, lawyers for the parents said that Jeffco’s lack of specific notice about rooming assignments and its accommodation options stigmatizes religious students and infringes on families’ “fundamental parental rights.”

Sterett argued the district’s accommodations burden families by forcing students to miss opportunities or potentially room with a student of a different sex.

Jeffco’s policy allows parents to limit students to daytime participation when applicable or allows them to forgo trips altogether, according to court documents.

“That strikes me as a burden that needs to be justified,” Judge Harris Hartz said.

JCSD attorneys countered that many religious‑freedom opt‑out policies impose burdens, citing costs associated with day care or homeschooling for students who opt out of public school programs for religious reasons.

Attorneys said the district provides general notice through its overnight‑accommodations policy and argued that, under state law, it cannot confidently provide specific notifications. 

Colorado law allows birth certificates to be changed and limits disclosure of such information, and the district does not require documents displaying sex at birth for student registration.

“Because we don’t know the students’ sex assigned at birth, we can’t keep a roster,” Olson said.

Plaintiffs countered that schools routinely track sex information without invasive verification and that other districts use available tools to accommodate parents.

“I don’t think that they can cite the Colorado law as an exception that eats the rule, and creates a situation where they just have to throw up their hands, and we don’t know any child sex. That’s just not true,” Sterett said.

Both sides expressed some openness to a remand, though they disagreed on whether a preliminary injunction should take effect. The appellate court can affirm, reverse, modify or send the case back to the district court for further proceedings.

The case is Wailes v. Jefferson County Public Schools.