The National School Boards Association (NSBA) made the comparison in a letter shortly before the Department of Justice issued a memorandum on the issue, and a document indicates that Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona solicited the letter, though a spokesperson denied it. That letter cited Scott Smith, whose daughter was sexually assaulted in a girl's restroom in May. Smith got arrested and was ultimately convicted of disorderly conduct for acting in anger after Superintendent Scott Ziegler insisted at a June school board meeting that "the predator transgender student or person simply does not exist." Ziegler has since apologized for this comment.
A judge sentenced the teen who victimized Smith's daughter to supervised probation and forced him to register as a sex offender, commenting that the assailant's record "scared me." The Loudoun County Juvenile Court had previously found the male student "not innocent" of charges of forcible sodomy and forcible fellatio against a female student in a May 28 incident at Stone Bridge High School. The same student pleaded "no contest" in a separate case to two charges of abduction and sexual battery involving an incident at Broad Run High School on October 6.