A transgender high school student in Indiana says she was humiliated, and has even considered transferring schools, after she was misgendered and her “dead name” was included in a list of candidates for Homecoming court.
Grace Grabner, a senior at Carroll High School in Fort Wayne, Ind., has identified as female for the past six years. But last week she was mortified after the district included her birth name on a list of Homecoming King candidates, which was distributed to her classmates, instead of on the list for Homecoming Queen.
“It was embarrassing and it took me back to middle school when that was the hardest time,” Grabner told Fort Wayne ANC affiliate WPTA. “It reminded me of everything that happened in middle school and how people treated me.”
Grabner says she has experienced, and in some instances, continues to experience, bullying and harassment due to her gender identity.
She hopes that Northwest Allen County Schools will take concrete steps to stop harassment and make transgender and gender-nonconforming students feel safer and more accepted.
A spokeswoman for Northwest Allen County Schools said the list of girls’ names and boys’ names were computer-generated based on the official names listed on transcripts.
They argue that because Grabner’s official transcript does not bear a name matching her gender identity she was “inadvertently” placed on the wrong list.
“We made a mistake on our end and we apologize profusely that this error happened where we inadvertently took one student who should have been on one list and put them on the opposite list. That was our responsibility and our fault, and we feel terrible about it,” spokeswoman Lizette Downey said in a statement.
The district released a follow-up statement, saying: “This was not a policy decision, a political statement, or purposeful insensitivity to any person or group, it was an oversight. We sincerely apologize for this mistake and will take steps to prevent similar issues from occurring again in the future.”
A new Williams Institute report shows LGBTQ adults are more likely to rely on food assistance -- and could be disproportionately harmed by Republican-led efforts to slash SNAP funding.
A new report from the Williams Institute, an LGBTQ-focused think tank at UCLA School of Law, finds that 15% of LGBTQ adults -- nearly 2.1 million people -- received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits in the past year.
The report arrives as Congress prepares to pass legislation backed by President Donald Trump that would make his 2017 tax cuts permanent. In exchange -- particularly for high-income earners and corporations -- the Republican-backed bill proposes significant cuts to domestic social safety net programs.
Owen McIntire, a 19-year-old from Parkville, Missouri, has pleaded not guilty to federal charges after allegedly firebombing Teslas at a Kansas City dealership. The crime could carry up to 30 years in prison if the UMass Boston student is convicted.
McIntire's case was elevated to the Justice Department’s national security division, which typically handles terrorism and espionage cases. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has called the incident “domestic terrorism.”
"Let me be extremely clear to anyone who still wants to firebomb a Tesla property: you will not evade us," Bondi said following McIntire’s arrest in April. "You will be arrested. You will be prosecuted. You will spend decades behind bars. It is not worth it."
The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a Tennessee law banning doctors from prescribing gender-affirming puberty blockers and hormones to transgender youth with gender dysphoria.
A group of families of transgender youth and a doctor who treats them sued to overturn the law, arguing it was unconstitutional, infringed on parental rights, and violated nondiscrimination protections in the Affordable Care Act. Lower courts ultimately dismissed the parental rights and ACA-based claims.
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