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A federal appeals court in St. Louis, Missouri, prohibited a school district in Iowa from imposing anti-free speech regulations that punish students and staff who refuse to “respect” the identity of transgender students.
In August 2022, Parents Defending Education (PDE) brought a lawsuit on behalf of a group of parents, challenging the policy. A lower court ruled against the lawsuit, forcing the nonprofit advocate and parents to approach the appeals court.
On Sept. 29, a three-judge panel from the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis ruled in favor of parents and prohibited the district from enforcing the policy.
According to the appeals court ruling, parents accused the school district’s policies of violating their children’s right to freedom of speech.
Some of the children abstained from expressing their beliefs regarding biological sex and gender identity due to fear that authorities would take disciplinary action, they claimed.
A male student believed that “biological sex is immutable” and that biological males identifying as female “should not be allowed to compete in women’s sports,” according to the court ruling. He was also uncomfortable about sharing bathrooms with students and teachers of the opposite biological sex. However, the student “remains silent in school ‘when gender identity topics arise’ to avoid violating the policy.”
The school district argued that its policy does not violate constitutional rights as “harassment or bullying on the basis of gender is not protected speech.”
However, the appeals court dismissed the argument, citing an earlier ruling that speech cannot be regulated as an “invasion of the rights of others” just because “the speech is merely offensive to some listener.”
What Is ‘Respect’?
The appeals court observed that the school district’s policy does not provide “adequate notice” of the type of prohibited conduct as it fails to define the term “respect.”
“Because the policy does not define or limit the term, it could cover any speech about gender identity that a school administrator deems ‘disrespectful’ of another student’s gender identity,” the court said.
“A student thus cannot know whether he is violating the policy when he expresses discomfort about sharing a bathroom with someone who is transgender, argues that biological sex is immutable during a debate in social studies class, or expresses an opinion about the participation of transgender students on single-sex athletic teams.”
The school district argued that the term “respect” is only used in the context of a student’s preferred name and pronouns and will not apply to “general opinions” about gender identity. However, the court was “not convinced” by the argument, pointing out that “the plain meaning of the policy is not so limited.”
“The policy threatens discipline for a refusal to ‘respect a student’s gender identity,’ not for a refusal to respect a student’s preferred name or pronoun,” it said.
“The term ‘gender identity’ is defined as ‘[a] person’s deeply-held sense or psychological knowledge of their own gender’—a capacious concept that likely goes well beyond a name and a pronoun.”
The lack of clarity about the policy risks “arbitrary enforcement” of its rules, the appeals court said while sending the case back to a lower court for reconsideration.
Schools Imposing Pronoun Use
Several other schools across the country have enforced LGBT pronoun policies which have adversely impacted students and teachers who refuse to advocate the ideologies.
“This isn’t about a T-shirt; this is about a public school telling a seventh grader that he isn’t allowed to hold a view that differs from the school’s preferred orthodoxy,” ADF Senior Counsel Tyson Langhofer, said at the time.
