A federal complaint says the Parents' Bill of Rights, passed last year, means public schools in North Carolina "are systematically marginalizing lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) students."

Attorneys working with the Campaign for Southern Equality filed the federal Title IX complaint Tuesday. Senate Bill 49, titled the "Parents' Bill of Rights," requires schools to tell parents if students ask to go by a different pronoun.

The 2023 law bans transgender students from playing sports on teams of the gender they identify with, and creating a chilling effect for educators and transgender students, according to the complaint. It also outlaws teaching about gender identity and sexuality before fifth grade.

“When S.B. 49 passed we imagined all of the ways that students, parents, educators, and the North Carolina school system at large would be damaged. This complaint shows that those harms are actually happening right now in schools across North Carolina – endangering and marginalizing LGBTQ+ students and students from LGBTQ+ families," said Craig White, with the Campaign for Southern Equality.

"The state’s public education system is now clouded by fear, discrimination, and censorship that interferes with students’ ability to learn," he said. "It is time for school districts to stop implementing S.B. 49 – because the anti-LGBTQ+ policies that this law requires are patently incompatible with the Title IX protections to which every LGBTQ+ student is entitled.”

Most school districts in North Carolina changed their policies in recent months to conform with the new state law. The one exception is the board for the Chapel Hill-Carrboro School District.

Board members in that district said they would not comply with two of the more controversial provisions in the law: the ban on teaching about gender identify and sexuality in kindergarten through fourth grade and the requirement for schools to tell parents when a student changes their pronouns.

The complaint says the new law violates students' civil rights under Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972.

The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction has not returned a request for comment on the complaint, which names N.C. DPI and the North Carolina State Board of Education. 

The complaint includes testimonials from unnamed students, parents, educators and school staff.

“I am a transgender student, and I have been out at school for 2 years (since 8th grade). My parents are not accepting of me and have not allowed me to use my name in the classroom. I came out secretly to my teachers in 9th grade, and this made me feel a lot safer at school," one student, identified as Student 88, said. 

"This new 'Parents’ Bill of Rights' has made it mandatory for my teachers to tell my parents the fact that I use a different name and pronouns. My parents disapproved, of course, and it was a fight for me to be able to be who I am in a place that I’m in almost every day," the student said, according to the complaint.