Appeals court revives Virginia locker room case against transgender sex offender Richard Cox
A registered child sex offender used Arlington's identity rule to stand naked in a girls' locker room. The appeals court just put the loitering counts back on the docket.
Summary
- The Washington Examiner reports the Virginia Court of Appeals reversed an Arlington judge who had thrown out loitering charges against registered child sex offender Richard Cox.
- Cox, a biological man who identifies as a woman, is also charged with indecent exposure and indecent liberties after entering female locker rooms under county policy that keys facilities to identity, not sex.
- Police were called to Washington-Liberty High School on Oct. 21, 2024, about a naked male with an erection in the women's shower. Investigators say Cox signed into nine Arlington school sites in one month.
- Witnesses said he walked naked for hours in front of girls. Phone evidence highlighted children's swim and gymnastics times. Judge Daniel T. Lopez had voided the loitering law as vague. The appeals court said he used the wrong test and sent the case back.
Commentary
A mother in Arlington still sits on a vinyl bench outside a girls' locker room and listens for a laugh that is supposed to be ordinary. She does not owe a registered offender a county policy. She owes her daughter a door that knows the difference between a girl and a man.
That is the gap. The county wrote an identity rule. Cox used it like a key. A high-school shower is not a debate stage. It is a wet tile floor where a child is supposed to be safe.
Look every school board in this country in the eye: if a sex-offender registry cannot beat a locker-room policy, what was the registry for?
Comments
A registry is a lock. A policy that hands the offender a key is malpractice.
I have daughters. Nine school sign-ins in a month is a hunt, not a mix-up.
Loitering law does not need a poem. It needs the as-applied facts the appeals court demanded.
A serious district keys the door to sex, not a statement. Arlington keyed it backward.
Phone highlights on kids' swim times are the exhibit. Do not lose them in a vagueness seminar.
I send a girl to practice. I do not send her to share a shower with a registered man.
Oct. 21 at Washington-Liberty is the whole file. Keep the counts. Change the policy.
If the next district copies Arlington, it copies the key. Kill the policy.
The Examiner printed the shower call, nine sign-ins, and the remand. Do not blur the nouns.
Sex-segregate the rooms. Keep the docket alive. Ban registered offenders from the building.
