What should a gym teacher do when there’s a 15-year-old lesbian in the girl’s locker room? Do nothing? Remove the lesbian and send her to the principal’s office? Create a third dressing area? Or just throw everyone in one big uncomfortable locker room?

Ashly Massey is an eighth-grader in Banning, California. The 15-year-old is suing her middle school because she claims the school forced her to sit in the principal’s office during physical education class after the teacher heard Ashly was a lesbian.

School officials contend that other girls were uncomfortable dressing in front of Ashly. Obviously, Ashly was disappointed and is suing for discrimination. But let’s ignore the legalities and Constitutional issues for a moment and discuss the situation itself.

This is a middle school. A place where the majority of teenage girls are extremely self-conscious about their bodies. And this is when there’s no chance of anyone being attracted to them in the locker room. How are these teenagers supposed to deal with the possibility of being in the shower while another girl might be looking at them in a sexual way?

This isn’t to say that Ashly would look at these girls in a sexual way. She might not. In fact, she might be the most controlled individual on the planet and, with all her being, rush to get out of the locker room so as to prevent anyone from thinking she might look. But these are still teenagers. They’re not adults who can suck it up and be uncomfortable. They are girls who probably giggle uncontrollably about that girl who got her period playing kickball last year.

So what’s a gym teacher to do? She can’t ban Ashly from gym. That would probably be unconstitutional and violative of equal protection laws. But the teacher can’t just ignore the fact that other girls might be uncomfortable dressing in front of Ashly. Creating a third locker room doesn’t make sense because then you have the possibility that everyone in that locker room is looking at each other in a sexual way.

The best solution is to build individual showers with attached dressing rooms. Like the ones you see in most college dorms. Sure, it’s an expensive option, but it’s really the only alternative that can satisfy everyone involved. And, maybe by promising to take this step, the school system can take a step forward in privacy and remove this case from an already clogged legal docket. Of course, that’s only if Ashly wants a solution instead of cash.