A school board race in northwest suburban Palatine is heating up as candidates face what some call the civil rights question of the modern era: How schools and other institutions should address the rights of transgender students.

Illinois School District 211 has been wrestling with this issue for nearly 18 months after a transgender student sued her school in December 2015 to allow her to use the girls’ locker room. The one-time exception made for the student sparked a debate in the community that soon garnered national attention when the federal government stepped in.

Morning Shift talks to WBEZ Education reporter Linda Lutton about how the locker room in a Palatine high school became a battleground in the national fight over transgender rights.