Based on the stories we cover at College Insurrection, bathroom use has clearly become the new civil rights battleground.

The U.S. Department of Justice’s latest cause – fighting for a transgendered California ninth-grader’s right to use the boy’s room at school – has conservative groups wondering just how far Washington will go in the name of civil rights.

The student was born a girl but “has identified as a boy from a young age,” according to the Department of Justice, which reached a settlement with the public school district in Arcadia, an affluent LA suburb. Under the deal, the district must not only change the student’s restroom privileges and make similar accommodations on overnight trips.  It also must institute a host of measures to ensure transgender students are treated as whatever gender they consider themselves to be.

Randy Thomasson, president of SaveCalifornia.com, said Attorney General Eric Holder is off-base in pushing the case as a matter of civil rights.

“Eric Holder needs to reread the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and find out that civil rights are based on an unchangeable, immutable characteristic,” Thomasson said. “You cannot change your genes or your gender. You have chromosomes and they are either XX or XY. This is a girl who has been environmentally warped to believe she is a boy, and, instead of coddling this confused child, her parents should have gotten her into counseling with an expert on gender confusion.”

According to a DOJ report, the student began her gender transition from female to male during fifth grade after being teased and socially ostracized at school and on a school camping trip. After spring vacation, she adopted a male name and began wearing masculine clothing and teachers and classmates were told to use masculine pronouns in reference to her. She also used a gender-neutral bathroom for the remainder of the school year, according to the report.

n the years that followed, the student’s parents repeatedly tried to get the district to allow the student to use male-designated facilities but the school refused, citing safety and privacy concerns. Stating that she could use the private restroom in the nurse’s office, the child was reportedly frustrated with this arrangement. When the school denied a 2011 request from the student’s parents to allow her to share a cabin with several boys during a school trip, they filed a complaint with the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.

Under the settlement approved unanimously by the school board, the district agreed to amend “its policies and procedures, training staff, and ensuring appropriate supports for the student and other transgender students who request it.”