Schools And The Courts

When it comes to schools and trans students where you live makes a big difference, here in Connecticut on the whole schools have been pretty good to trans students but in other states it can be hell.

Parents pull transgender third grader from school due to bullying
By FOX4News.com Staff
Posted: September 29, 2016

A Grapevine family said they had no choice but to pull their third grader out of school because she was being bullied for being transgender and wasn’t getting proper treatment.
Marilyn Morrison started the school year as a girl for the first time in her life, but she’ll finish the school year at home.

Marilyn, who was a boy at birth, returned to Cannon Elementary School in Grapevine this year as a transgender girl. The third grader says many of her classmates and teachers didn't embrace the change.

“I just can't take it,” she said. “It's too much for a kid like me.”

“In the end, it was getting to the point that she had already lost faith,” explained her mom, Chelsa Morrison. “Every time she would try to go to a teacher and follow proper protocol, it always ended up in it is a misunderstanding. You send it to the point that she didn't want to talk to them anymore.”

By law school are required to provide a safe learning space and by not stopping the bullying by not only the students but also they are in violation of that law.

See the video of the interview below…

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From there we go to Lincoln Nebraska,

For transgender students, acceptance goes beyond a bathroom stall
Lincoln Journal Star
By Margaret Reist
September 27, 2016

Being transgender today means living something that’s become a flashpoint in the culture wars, an intensely private journey playing out in legislative chambers and courtrooms and drawing impassioned crowds to school board meetings.

The debate often centers on the use of high school bathrooms and locker rooms.

The Obama administration pushed the issue with a directive in May that says Title IX protections include gender identity, which means public schools must allow transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender expression.

The directive prompted numerous states, including Nebraska, to file lawsuits alleging federal overreach. Last month, a federal judge in Texas temporarily blocked the directive, prohibiting schools from enforcing it while the case proceeds.

Here, the Nebraska School Activities Association passed a controversial bylaw creating a path for transgender students to participate in high school sports based on their gender identity, but it stopped short of allowing transgender students to use locker rooms they choose.

I believe that today there is a hearing in federal court to limit the court actions to just the states in its jurisdiction.

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I saved the worst to last, down in North Carolina…

This North Carolina sheriff compared transgender kids to lice infestation
LGBTQ Nation
By Dawn Ennis
September 29, 2016

The sheriff of Wake County, N.C. is reconsidering the dedicated assignment of his police officers to protect school children and teachers, as a result of a standoff with school administrators, who he accuses of not adequately defining the district’s policy on transgender children.

“I’m thinking about pulling my school resource officers out of those schools,” Sheriff Donnie Harrison told reporter from WRAL-TV last week. “If we can’t have a better relationship, if they can’t work with us, I don’t know how we can work with them.”

And in defending his position to a Raleigh-Durham news website, the sheriff implied in an email that the policy regarding infectious diseases, such as head lice, should be applied to transgender students. He denied reports that his stance has anything to do with North Carolina‘s anti-LGBTQ legislation, House Bill 2, which restricts trans individuals from using any public bathrooms except the ones that corresponds with the birth listed on their birth certificates.

Yeah, right. I believe HB2 had nothing to do with the sheriff’s comments.

In this year’s election remember that whoever wins the election will be appointing maybe up to three Supreme Court justices and a good number of lower court judges that the Republican controlled Senate has refused to confirm. All the gains nationally that we have made is the result of court rulings that are set to be challenged before the Supreme Court, we will learn on Monday if the court will hear the cases or let the lower court rulings stand.