A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by parents against Loudoun County Public Schools, which claimed the system’s racial equity and inclusion programs violated students’ constitutional rights.

In an opinion issued Wednesday, federal judge Anthony Trenga ruled that the parents, represented in the suit by the conservative advocacy law firm the Liberty Justice Center, failed to show that the school system’s 22-page “Action Plans To Combat Systemic Racism” guidance violated First Amendment rights and the equal protection clause.

A group of parents filed the lawsuit initially in June 2021, in response to LCPS’ plan to address long-standing racial discrimination and equity issues in the wealthy and diversifying school system. The action plan followed an audit and a probe from the commonwealth’s attorney general’s office, which revealed that Loudoun schools had a “hostile learning environment” for students of color, and called for extensive reforms.

The lawsuit centered around two programs in the LCPS racial equity framework: the bias reporting system, which would allow school officials to investigate reports of racism and discrimination, and the student equity ambassador program, which would give a group of students a chance to collect student complaints related to experiences of racism, inequity, and injustice, and then anonymously share them with staff members. In the lawsuit, parents alleged that these programs created a chilling effect on student speech and discriminated against students based on their race.

While it doesn’t explicitly use the term “critical race theory,” the suit was filed as CRT (a field of academic study that school officials repeatedly said was not a part of the racial equity framework) became a national lightning rod for conservative outrage, eventually metastasizing into a culture war that would shape Virginia’s gubernatorial election. Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin made it a promise (or maybe even refrain) of his campaign to ban CRT on “day one” – a promise he held. Shortly after swearing in last weekend, Youngkin swiftly issued an executive order banning CRT in schools. The Liberty Justice Center, representing the parents in the case, claimed the racial equity plan was explicitly tied to CRT.

Parent and resident advocates in Loudoun who support the system’s plans for an inclusive and racial equitable curriculum see the judge’s ruling – which picks apart and dismantles the plaintiff’s arguments in an 18-page opinion – as a win for LCPS, and a blow to the CRT argument roiling the school system.

“The immediate reaction is, this great news, that this is what we’ve been saying,” says Todd Kaufman, the vice president of Loudoun4All, an advocacy organization formed by LCPS parents in response to the debates roiling the system over the past two years.“[The plaintiffs] were convinced that this was the CRT case, that this would expose Loudoun County Schools, that this was inherently racist or anti-white. And we’ve been saying none of that is correct.”

A Loudoun County Public Schools spokesperson declined to comment on the lawsuit, and the Liberty Justice Center did not return DCist/WAMU’s request for comment. Daniel Suhr, the managing attorney, told the Washington Post that the group plans to appeal the judge’s ruling.

In his opinion, Trenga writes that the parents’ argument against the student ambassador program, which essentially boils down to using “a passion for social justice” as a selection criteria, does not violate the First Amendment. He goes on to write that their claim that the bias reporting system may have a chilling effect on student speech also has no legal standing.

“Plaintiffs have failed to allege facts that make plausible that the Bias Incident Reporting System will harm them in any way,” Trenga writes. “Plaintiffs have not alleged that there have been any disciplinary incidents initiated as a result of the reporting forms; or that any alleged incidents have even passed beyond the Equity Office for an investigation.”

He argues that the parents’ problems with the framework cannot be litigated in the court system, but instead in Loudoun County’s School Board, which has been the target of parental anger and fear for more than a year.

The dismissal comes as the school board faces multiple recall campaigns from the parent group Fight for Schools, which calls itself a “non-partisan political action committee,” and is led by a former Trump senior official Ian Prior. The group has been waging a campaign to remove six board members for months, alleging “neglect of duty, misuse of office, and incompetence in the performance of their duties.” This week, the local NAACP chapter announced it would be seeking to intervene in the recall campaigns of two board members. (The campaigns already prompted one board member to resign in October.)

Meanwhile, the board faces increased scrutiny from Youngkin. In one of his first actions as governor, he issued an executive order requesting that the new attorney general, Jason Miyares, complete a full investigation into the Loudoun County School Board and its administration over the mishandling of two sexual assaults that occurred in LCPS schools, by the same student. The teenager, who assaulted two classmates at two different schools, was found guilty of committing both sexual assaults, and sentenced earlier this year.