This week’s story that makes you wonder aloud, “What the hell?” comes from a Pennsylvania high school which just settled a lawsuit with three transgender students, paying them $20,000 each because, you know, prior to this, the kids had to use the restroom that matched the gender with which they were born instead of the one with which they identified.
To say it another way: Pennsylvania’s taxpayer dollars went to a few kids and their parents who are trying to impose gender entitlements of the minority onto the majority, and they’re literally making Pennsylvanians pay for it.
The Pittsburgh-Post Gazette reported, “Two students born anatomically male who now identify as female and one born anatomically female who identifies as male sued in October to overturn interim rules that required students to use restrooms corresponding to their anatomical sex.
The interim rules were used after some parents complained other students’ privacy was violated by letting transgender students use the restrooms of their choosing.” Rather than litigate, the school settled the issue for a mere $20,000 per student.
If that’s not infuriating enough, there’s more to this case than it appears. With one of the best LGBTQ lawyers in the country at Lambda Legal spearheading their legal case, the students filed the lawsuit last year following former President Barack Obama’s transgender mandate. Ironically, the kids were seniors when they filed (which means the ruling will only help transgender students following in their footsteps) and the students had been allowed to use “a unisex bathroom or the private bathroom in the nurse’s office” which was supposedly not adequate. A Pennsylvania judge Obama had appointed ruled in favor of these teens’ demands, saying their civil rights had been violated.
With the ACLU applauding the case and Lambda Legal charging forward with the adage that transgender entitlements of the few should surpass the privacy rights of the many, the Pennsylvania school district didn’t even stand a chance. Unless there were special provisions or grants given, the Pine Richland School likely footed their own legal bills, which essentially means the hardworking people of that school district provided court costs and lawyer fees for the school to combat the lawsuit.
While settling was likely cheaper, the three transgender students who’ve already graduated now move on to adulthood $20,000 richer, thanks to Pennsylvania taxpayers — and the LGBTQ movement adds another entitlement notch in their belt of progressive policies.
Nicole Russell is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist in Washington, D.C., who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota. She was the 2010 recipient of the American Spectator’s Young Journalist Award.
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