A federal appeals court ordered a local Ohio school district to dismantle a policy banning the use of biological sex pronouns to refer to transgender students in a ruling on Friday.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit sided 10-7 in an en banc ruling with Defending Education, a parental rights movement group that works to “fight indoctrination in classrooms,” per their mission statement.
Defending Education sued the Olentangy Local School District in 2023 over the district’s policy on language used to refer to transgender students, arguing the “policies require the students to conform their speech to the District’s views on gender identity.”
Friday’s en banc decision upheld the group’s argument and issued a preliminary injunction to prohibit the district from “punishing students for the commonplace use of biological pronouns.”
“Olentangy School District was sternly reminded by the 6th circuit en banc court that it cannot force students to express a viewpoint on gender identity with which they disagree, nor extend its reach beyond the schoolhouse threshold into matters better suited to an exercise of parental authority,” Vice President of Defending Education Sarah Parshall Perry said.
The majority court opinion argued the District “introduced no evidence that the use of biological pronouns would disrupt school functions or qualify as harassment under Ohio law.”
“Our society continues to debate whether biological pronouns are appropriate or offensive—just as it continues to debate many other issues surrounding transgender rights. The school district may not skew this debate by forcing one side to change the way it conveys its message or by compelling it to express a different view,” the majority opinion read.
Perry called the opinion “a resounding victory for student speech and parental rights.”
Judge Jane B. Stranch wrote in her dissenting opinion that the district’s gender identity amendment to its discrimination and harassment policies lasted for over a decade “without issue,” until Defending Education’s lawsuit. She said the majority’s opinion offers a blurry standard to weigh the “political significance” of speech in district policies.
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“The work that school administrators and teachers must do to cultivate safe and productive educational environments while protecting students’ rights, as the Supreme Court recognized in Tinker v. Des Moines, is already challenging. By introducing an amorphous standard weighing the political significance of the speech in question, I fear we will make the daunting tasks of these public servants all the more difficult,” Stranch wrote.
The state of Ohio recently dealt parental rights advocates another win in mid-October, when the state House of Representatives passed the My Child-My Chart Act, which would grant parents access to their children’s medical records.
