A girl from Wisconsin filed a lawsuit Tuesday against her school district for not letting her use the men’s bathroom and refusing to refer to her by male pronouns.
Ash Whitaker, a transgender student who transitioned from a girl to a boy, sued her school district in a federal court, reports The Washington Post. The lawsuit claims that her school district, Kenosha Unified School District, infringed upon her civil rights by not letting her use the bathroom that corresponds to her “gender identity.”
In the lawsuit, Whitaker and her mother claimed that Superintendent Sue Savaglio-Jarvis and other officials “have repeatedly refused to recognize or respect (Whitaker’s) gender identity and have taken a series of discriminatory and highly stigmatizing actions against him.”
The lawsuit also claims that Whitaker’s civil rights were violated because teachers did not use the proper pronouns when addressing her and the school had security guards make sure that Whitaker used the correct bathroom. The school district allegedly handed out green bracelets in order to monitor which bathrooms transgenders students used.
“These lawsuits are about the equal treatment of transgender students and making sure they are treated just like every other student in their schools,” said Alison Pennington, a staff attorney at the Transgender Law Center.The Transgender Law Center filed the lawsuit on Whitaker’s behalf.
Last April, Whitaker tried running for prom king but was told to run for prom queen instead because she is biologically a female. Whitaker started a petition against the school’s ruling that collected about 7,000 signatures and a group of students staged a sit in with Whitaker. The school ended up changing its mind.
Wisconsin is one of eleven states currently suing the federal government over Title IX, which the Obama administration interpreted to allow transgenders to use the bathroom according to their “gender identity” rather than their biological sex.
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