The Boulder Valley School District in Boulder, Colorado, says transgender students have a “right” to be addressed by their preferred pronouns and that a person’s failure to do so violates district policy.
The policy says a student “has the right to be addressed by a name and pronoun that corresponds to the student’s gender identity” regardless of whether the student has legally changed his or her name.
“The intentional or persistent refusal to respect a student’s gender identity … is a violation of these Guidelines,” the district’s policy says.
The policy corresponds with the district’s “gender support plan” and “gender transition plan,” two forms that school administrators will fill out for students who indicate they wish to identify as a gender separate from their biological sex.
One section of both forms requires administrators to answer whether or not the student’s guardian is “supportive of their child’s gender status.” If the answer is no, administrators must answer “what considerations must be accounted for in implementing” the student’s gender transition plan.
Other sections of the forms direct administrators to detail the student’s preferred bathroom facility usage and pronouns, the student’s desired names, and the student’s “go-to adult” to speak to within the school.
Nicole Neily, the president of the parent activist group Parents Defending Education, blasted the school district for what she said was “compelled speech.”
“Public schools are not entitled to the real estate in children’s heads or mouths — yet that’s exactly what Boulder Valley is trying to do here,” Neily said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “Let’s be very clear: compelled speech is a First Amendment violation, and no amount of wordsmithing gives districts the authority to preempt the U.S. Constitution.”
In a statement to the Washington Examiner, Boulder Valley School District spokesman Randy Barber said, “The right for students to have their preferred name be used is actually a state law in Colorado.”
Barber continued, “The Colorado Civil Rights Commission specifically identifies prohibited conduct as ‘deliberately misusing an individual’s preferred name, form of address, or gender-related pronouns,’ such as intentionally referring to the student by a name or pronoun that does not correspond to the student’s gender identity.”
The Colorado school district is not the first to threaten discipline for the failure to address transgender students by their preferred identity. In May, three Wisconsin middle school students were placed under a Title IX investigation for refusing to use a transgender student’s preferred pronouns that did not correspond to the student’s biological sex.
In Virginia, the Fairfax County School Board finalized a plan this month that empowers administrators to punish students who “misgender” their classmates with suspensions.
