The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that cisgender students may repeatedly and intentionally misgender transgender classmates, invalidating an Ohio school district’s policies that sought to stop the practice.
In a 10-7 decision, the court found that Olentangy Local School District’s prohibition on using “gendered language they know is contrary to the other student’s identity,” including pronouns and honorifics, infringes on the rights of students who believe there are only two genders.
The challenged policies include an anti-harassment rule prohibiting “discriminatory harassment” or bullying based on gender identity and other protected traits that “places a student or school employee in reasonable fear of harm,” interferes with education or work, or disrupts school operations, according to The Associated Press.
Other policies include an electronic devices rule — applying both in and out of school — barring transmission of “disruptive” material that could be seen as harassing LGBTQ students. A separate code of conduct bans discriminatory language, including “verbal or written comments, jokes, and slurs that are derogatory” targeting protected characteristics, including LGBTQ identity.
Parents Defending Education, a national “parental rights” group, filed the lawsuit two years ago. It argued that the district’s anti-harassment and anti-bullying rules were unconstitutional, violating cisgender students’ free speech and religious liberty by forcing them into compelled speech.
The group also claimed the policies unlawfully extend to off-campus behavior, infringing on parents’ Fourteenth Amendment right to raise their children by reaching “well beyond the confines of the school day and into the privacy of families’ homes.”
A federal judge ruled against Parents Defending Education, holding that “intentional misgendering has the effect of creating a hostile environment for transgender students” and causes substantial disruption. A three-judge 6th Circuit panel later upheld that ruling.
Parents Defending Education then sought en banc review, sending the case to the full 6th Circuit — a bench two-thirds appointed by Republicans — resulting in last week’s 10-7 ruling.
The majority held that intentional, repeated misgendering does not create a “substantial disruption” to transgender students. Instead, it argued, banning misgendering harms the cisgender students doing it by limiting their free speech or religious expression.
“Unlike, say, a political diatribe about transgender rights in math class, the mere use of biological pronouns does not entail ‘aggressive, disruptive action,” Judge Eric Murphy wrote for the majority.
Murphy continued: “Our society continues to debate whether biological pronouns are appropriate or offensive — just as it continues to debate many other issues surrounding transgender rights. The school district may not skew this debate by forcing one side to change the way it conveys its message or by compelling it to express a different view.”
The majority stressed that its ruling does not bar the district from enforcing anti-harassment policies against abuse of transgender students, just as it can act against bullying based on religion, race, ethnicity, or physical traits.
In her Erin in the Morning Substack, Erin Reed criticized the ruling, arguing it “carved out a special status” for undefined “biological pronouns.”
“At one point, the judges confronted the obvious implication of their logic: that if intentional misgendering is protected, a student could just as easily target a cisgender peer — for example, calling a smaller or weaker cisgender boy ‘she’ and using she/her pronouns to mock him,” Reed wrote. “To wave this away, the court claimed that such conduct would amount to ‘ridiculing the physical characteristics’ of a cisgender student, while declining to extend the same protection to transgender students subjected to identical behavior. Under this reasoning, a cisgender student may intentionally and repeatedly misgender a transgender classmate, but the transgender student would be barred from responding in kind.”
The ruling sends the case back to U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley, who must now issue a preliminary injunction barring the district from enforcing its pronoun-related policies, reports ABC News.
The ruling means public schools in the states covered by the 6th Circuit — Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee — will likely see policies protecting transgender students from intentional misgendering struck down. Without those rules, schools could effectively be forced to permit harassment stemming from a student’s refusal to recognize a transgender peer’s gender identity.
Ruby Corado plans to request a new court-appointed attorney after her current lawyer withdrew from her case.
The transgender advocate and founder of the now-defunct LGBTQ nonprofit Casa Ruby is scheduled to be sentenced on federal wire fraud charges on October 15.
A longtime fixture in D.C.’s transgender community, Corado was arrested in March 2024 and accused of diverting $150,000 from $1.3 million in federal COVID-era relief funds awarded to her nonprofit for her personal use.
In a historic move, Michael J. O'Loughlin, an award-winning journalist and gay man, has been named executive editor of the National Catholic Reporter, the nation's leading independent Catholic news organization.
A New England-based journalist, O'Loughlin has amassed more than 15 years of experience covering religion as a reporter, editor, podcast host, and author. For the past nine years, he has worked at America Media, the Jesuit news and commentary outlet, serving seven years as national correspondent and most recently as founding executive director of Outreach, an LGBTQ Catholic news site.
José Rolón, a gay father and popular social media influencer known as @nycgaydad, has filed a defamation lawsuit against right-wing commentator Stew Peters, who falsely accused him of "criminal sexual conduct" involving his three young children.
Rolón, who has more than 150,000 followers on Instagram and over 500,000 on TikTok, says he was barraged with death threats and vile messages after Peters attacked him online for sharing videos about his life as a single gay dad.
As reported by The Advocate, Rolón's legal team filed a five-count lawsuit in Kings County Supreme Court accusing Peters of defamation and bias-related intimidation under New York's Civil Rights Law, citing multiple false statements made against him.
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