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Alaska’s highest court heard oral arguments on Aug. 6 over the constitutionality of a school district’s bathroom policy. The case involves an elementary transgender student who sued the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District, arguing the policy violates his privacy rights.
In the Mat-Su Borough School District, the current policy requires students to use restrooms that correspond with their sex assigned at birth, or to use a single occupant restroom.
Anchorage attorney Susan Orlansky is representing X.A. – the elementary student who originally sued the district over its policy in 2024. The student’s initials are being used throughout the case to protect his privacy.
Orlansky argued before the Alaska Supreme Court that the policy singles X.A. out from his peers and violates his privacy rights under the state constitution.
“Between the explicit terms of the policy that exclude X.A. from the boys’ bathroom and the practical consequences of trying to use the girls’ bathroom, X.A. is functionally exiled from all the communal restrooms and must use the single occupant restroom,” she said.
Instead, Orlansky argued that transgender students like X.A. should be able to work with school administrators to come up with a suitable alternative.
“There are less restrictive alternatives,” she said. “There are ways of protecting every student’s bodily privacy without stigmatizing and exiling the transgender students into a single occupant bathroom.”
Orlansky said the previous guidelines of the Mat-Su district accomplished this. They allowed students to use restrooms that corresponded with their gender identity and required administrators to work with the student and family on creating a plan to address their needs.
But the district’s school board approved the current policy in 2022, overturning the seven-year-old guidelines.
In response to X.A. suing the district in 2024, the state Superior Court ruled in 2025 that the district’s current policy does not violate X.A’s constitutional privacy rights. X.A. appealed that decision earlier this year in January..
Clinton Campion represents the school district in the case. He argued that the Superior Court’s decision should be upheld, and that the policy has not harmed X.A.
“X.A.’s testimony is that he generally feels pretty normal at school,” Campion said. “He thinks school is pretty cool, and he’s treated well. He’s called by the name that he chooses. He feels free to present in the manner in which he wants to present. His mother agreed that the school worked well to reduce any concerns that she had.”
He argued that by providing every student access to a single occupant restroom, the district is not violating X.A.’s privacy rights.
‘I’m not here arguing that this court needs to say…every communal bathroom needs to be made available,” he said. “What we’re asking you to do is to find that what this school district did is constitutional.”
Campion added that the current policy helps protect X.A.’s privacy because using a boys’ restroom would also reveal his transgender identity. He references behavior the school’s principal has had to navigate around students looking under bathroom stalls. He said students would be able to figure out X.A.’s transgender identity because he wouldn’t be using the urinal.
“The record reflects that principal one suspected that kids would be curious, and that I think this court can conclude that they would have figured that the boys would have figured out that X.A. is a biological female, and and then so there’s that’s the privacy interest that’s addressed,” Campion said.
The state, represented by Jenna Lorence at the hearing, filed an amicus brief in support of the district. Lorence said the state agrees that the school district’s policy is constitutional.
“We think that a policy like this, that provides a total opt-out for anyone for any reason, if it’s enforced that way, can protect all students’ interests here,” she said.
In her closing, Orlansky, representing X.A., reiterated that she is asking the court to declare the policy unconstitutional and that there are ways to create policies that protect the privacy and rights of all students, without singling anyone out. She said the court should keep in mind that identities beyond the gender binary exist.
“The world is more complicated. It is not a gender binary, and courts and communities need to wrestle with ‘How do you treat the child that doesn’t fit in one of the two most standard categories?’” she said. “And we’re asking this court to be mindful of what we now know and not to pretend we are 80 years ago when we first had two kinds of bathrooms for people to use.”
The Supreme Court has not issued a decision on the case. Decisions can take months to be issued after oral arguments.
