Last year, the school board meetings of Deerfield Public Schools District 109 became national news. A mother’s accusation against school officials, made both at a board meeting and on national television, turned the district into a local flashpoint for a national fight over transgender student inclusion.
It culminated in the auditorium of Caruso Middle School, with hundreds packing the seats and lining up out the door.
That night, the group’s energy was far more in support of the unidentified transgender middle school student at the center of it all. When one trans student came to the lectern to speak, most stood to applaud — apart from two rows of attendees at the front that included officials from a local Moms for Liberty chapter.
But while D109’s board meetings have largely returned to their usual, far sparser attendance, the lawsuit parent Nicole Georgas filed against the district — alleging her daughter and other students at Shepard Middle School were forced by staffers to change in front of a transgender girl, and claiming the district’s policies violate Title IX — has continued, costing the district hundreds of thousands of dollars.
That lawsuit, and other challenges being made against Lake County school districts, offer a look into a broader ecosystem of conservative groups and figures across Illinois who oppose trans-inclusive student policies.
Awake Illinois
Based on school documents, D109 has taken on new law firms for Georgas’ lawsuit, including Gair Gallo Eberhard, a self-described “elite litigation boutique” that offers various specialties, including “complex civil litigation.”
An expenditure tracking document from the district earlier this month indicated that, including various legal, communication and security costs, the lawsuit has cost the district nearly $400,000.
Depending on who is filing, court documents paint far different pictures of what actually occurred during the incident at the lawsuit’s center, but a major issue raised by the plaintiff is Title IX, a 1972 law forbidding discrimination based on sex in education.
The administration of President Joe Biden had previously expanded the law to include gender identity and sexual orientation, but those additions were struck down nationwide in January of last year by a federal judge when President Donald Trump took office. Opponents argue that Illinois’ transgender inclusive policies, whether for sports or locker rooms, are now in violation of federal law.
While one of the most notable challenges in Lake County centering on transgender student policies, the D109 lawsuit is not the only one.
In April, North Chicago Community Unit School District 187 was one of 36 Illinois school districts listed as under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division for “sexual orientation and gender ideology content,” according to a department release.
The following month, Community High School District 128, which includes Libertyville and Vernon Hills High School, and D109 were among five school districts included in a slate of federal civil rights complaints filed by Awake Illinois, a conservative group based in Naperville.
Awake was founded in 2021 by Shannon Adcock, a Naperville mother who, during the COVID-19 pandemic, joined those railing against school mask mandates and other COVID-mitigation efforts, as well as equity and inclusion training in schools. Adcock is also the chair of Moms for Liberty DuPage County.
Adcock and Awake Illinois did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
It shares many similarities to other “anti-student inclusion groups” that came about in the early 2020s, Maya Henson, a senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said.
When Henson was brought on to the SPLC in 2022, school board meetings had grown increasingly hostile, she said. In the intense political environment following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, there arose a “hyper focus” on “critical race theory” and diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and the pandemic led to attacks on mask and vaccine mandates.
It was from this microcosm that ASI groups were born, Henson said, defining them as groups that maintain anti-government ideals and use “extremist tactics to combat specifically student diversity and inclusive education.” That distinction is different from a “hate group,” she noted.
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While not necessarily unique in tactics, Henson said Awake has risen to prominence through its aggressiveness, including — according to Henson — doxing, sharing trans hate speech and harassment.
In 2023, a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union Illinois told the Daily Southtown it had assisted two suburban residents threatened with defamation lawsuits after publicly criticizing the organization and its agenda.
In a response to the lawsuits, ACLU attorney Rebecca Glenberg said, “Awake Illinois and its leaders frequently accuse their opponents of nefarious motives or deeds and use hostile epithets — such as ‘groomers,’ ‘hateful,’ ‘perverts’ and ‘criminal lying bastards’ — to characterize those who disagree with them. Yet when others express their frank opinions about Awake Illinois, it responds with demands for silence.”
Awake, which describes itself as “unwoke, unafraid” and “uncancellable,” has repeatedly criticized the SPLC, including for placing Awake Illinois on its Hate Map.
In a letter to the House Judiciary Committee Hearing on the SPLC in May, Adcock described the placement as “defamation” and “damaging,” alleging it led to “harassment, doxxing attempts, threats to our volunteers’ livelihoods,” and a “chilling effect on free speech and association.”
Beyond Adcock, Awake membership has included current Naperville City Councilman Josh McBroom, Hancock County Board member Steve Lucie, and Helen Levinson, a Skokie parent who had a protracted legal fight with an Evanston-Skokie School District 65 teacher.
Awake has encouraged lawsuits like the one filed against D109. During a livestream, Adcock called on parents to either join ongoing lawsuits against Illinois school districts or file their own.
That’s where Ajay Gupta, the Republican candidate running for the Illinois House of Representatives District 41 seat, comes in. Online, his campaign emphasizes his economic platform: a tax lawyer and financial economist who emphasizes “fiscal sanity” while criticizing the state’s high taxes.
But for Awake Illinois and other conservative advocates, Gupta offers to work pro bono to bring lawsuits against school districts for their transgender student policies. He’s representing Georgas in her lawsuit against D109.
Gupta did not respond to a request for comment.
“You’ve made it very easy for these families to participate in these lawsuits,” Adcock said during a livestream with Gupta. “You’re the man for this fight.”
Federal government
Transgender people are a national talking point, and LGBTQ+ advocates have warned of growing challenges to transgender rights.
Whether the federal government will come down on Illinois school districts is hard to say in the current political environment, Henson said. Such groups have their roots going back to before the current administration, but today “a lot of people at the federal level are kind of sided with them.”
That alignment can be seen in Lake County. In April of last year, during the D109 controversy, America First Legal announced it had filed a complaint with the Department of Justice over the allegations.
In the complaint, AFL alleged the district violated Title IX and Trump’s Executive Order 14168, called “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”
AFL is a conservative nonprofit co-founded by Stephen Miller — the White House deputy chief of staff for policy — and Gene Hamilton, who previously served in the U.S. Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security during Trump’s first term in office.
The multitude of federal complaints filed seem to indicate opponents of inclusive transgender policies in Lake County are hoping for federal involvement.
In D128, Marnie Navarro, a previous candidate for the school board and a vocal district critic, warned the board during a June meeting that “the feds are coming.”
She’s alleged parallels between an ongoing controversy around a district teacher accused of grooming a student with Down syndrome and the district’s “obstinate refusal” to change its policies for transgender students and gender identity.
“Unsafe, immoral and illegal gender support guidelines endanger our girls daily,” Navarro said. “When, not if, the federal Department of Justice investigates 128, taxpayers will yet again foot the bill for your arrogant incompetence.”
On the state level, Illinois has remained supportive of the LGBTQ+ community — Gov. JB Pritzker recently signed several bills into law aiming to keep “Illinois a safe, empowering, and inclusive place for the LGBTQ+ community,” an office release said.
And Kristal Larson, executive director of the LGBTQ Center of Lake County, said she hasn’t seen any local candidates running on anti-trans platforms, although she warned that could change.
Larson worried about the financial costs school districts could face, whether legal fees from lawsuits and investigations like those in D109, or threats to federal funding. She criticized Awake for its efforts.
“These narratives and these attacks cause real harm to real people, and it keeps people afraid from existing,” Larson said. “It’s really difficult for people in our community right now to simply exist in many cases because of actions like what Awake Illinois is doing.”