Valedictorian

Nicole Maines blazed the trail with the Maine Supreme Court and for the first time in Maine a trans masculine student is the state’s first trans high school valedictorian.

Belfast senior will graduate as Maine’s first transgender valedictorian
Bangor Daily News
By Abigail Curtis, BDN Staff
May 4, 2020

BELFAST, Maine — Syd Sanders is perched at the top of his 109-senior graduating class this year at Belfast Area High. The Harvard University-bound valedictorian believes he is the first transgender student in Maine — and perhaps the nation — to graduate with that distinction.

But for the 18-year-old Sanders, who gets a little embarrassed when he talks about his academic accomplishments, the label of being a transgender valedictorian is secondary to who he is as a person.

What he is more than anything, perhaps, is genuine.

“I just am who I am,” he said. “I would probably be dead if I couldn’t be who I was. I just have to be myself.”

Many trans people in Maine are living dreams thanks to a legislature that is supportive of trans people.

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Back in 2011 Nicole Maines was transitioning and the school systems was going well for Nicole until the adults got involved, a custodial grandparent with the Christian Civic League of Maine backing him complained to the school system (I wrote about it here). That started a path that lead all the way to the Maine’s Supreme Court.

GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) lead the case to the Maine Supreme Court…

GLAD represented a transgender teen girl whose Orono, Maine elementary and middle schools removed her from the girls’ restroom because of her transgender status and forced her to use a staff-only, non-communal restroom in isolation from her peers. Eventually, the parents were forced to withdraw their daughter and her twin brother from the Orono school system and move them to another part of the state where they could go to school quietly and safely.

The parents also filed a complaint with the Maine Human Rights Commission and ultimately decided to file a lawsuit on behalf of their daughter. GLAD represented Nicole along with Lewiston attorney Jodi L. Nofsinger of Berman & Simmons, P.A.

Nicole Maines is now an actress on the Supergirl on CW network and has appeared in 44 shows.