Push to bar trans students from school sports hits legal roadblock | Salon.com

Push to bar trans students from school sports hits legal roadblock | Salon.com

Push to bar trans students from school sports hits legal roadblock

Judge tosses suit trying to block trans athletes

On Sunday, a federal judge threw out a Connecticut lawsuit that sought to bar transgender athletes from participating in high school girls' sports teams.

The suit, brought by four cisgender runners — Selina Soule, Chelsea Mitchell, Alanna Smith, and Ashley Nicoletti – was filed against the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC), a governing state body which sets the requirements for student athletic participation. The suit alleges that "CIAC policy puts non-transgender girls at a competitive disadvantage in girls' track and, as a result, denies them rights guaranteed by Title IX." The plaintiffs specifically claim to have been deprived of titles and opportunities as a result of their competitive disadvantage, according to AP News. 

The presiding judge over the case, U.S. District Judge Robert Chatigny, dismissed the suit because the two transgender athletes – who the plaintiffs allege held a competitive advantage – have since graduated from high school.

"I conclude that the request to enjoin enforcement of the CIAC policy has become moot due to the graduation of Yearwood and Miller, whose participation in girls' track provided the impetus for this action," Chatigny wrote. "There is no indication that Smith and Nicoletti will encounter competition by a transgender student in a CIAC-sponsored event next season."

Chatigny argued that the plaintiffs were no longer harmed by the damages they brought forth, seeing as they were no longer competing against transgender athletes. "If it turns out that a transgender student does register to compete in girls' track next season," the judge added, "Smith and Nicoletti will be able to file a new action under Title IX along with a motion for a preliminary injunction." CONTINUE READING: Push to bar trans students from school sports hits legal roadblock | Salon.com

Education Matters: Republicans create solutions where there weren't any problems: go after trans children and teacher's unions.

Education Matters: Republicans create solutions where there weren't any problems: go after trans children and teacher's unions.

Republicans create solutions where there weren't any problems: go after trans children and teacher's unions.

 In this session, the Republicans in the Florida Legislature have found one solution after another for problems that don't exist. Still, in doing so, they have caused problems, hardships, and grief. Last week they went after Trans children, and this week they are going after teacher's unions.

Last week the Florida House passed HB 1475, dubbed the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, and it passed 77-40, with all but one Democrat voting against it. This is a solution without a problem, as the Orlando Sentinel reported only a handful of trans children have played high school sports in Florida. Furthermore, when asked the bill's sponsor, Kaylee Tuck couldn't point to where this was a problem in Florida.

So what's the Florida Legislatures' solution? It is to ban transgender athletes from participating in girls' sports and to inspect children's genitalia should there be any doubt. Let me say that again. The Florida legislature has passed a bill that calls for the inspection of children's genitalia. Whether they play sports or not, our most vulnerable children have heard loud and clear that they are not worthy.

Then this week, a little closer to home Cord Byrd's anti-teacher union bill comes up for a vote. The bill would CONTINUE READING: Education Matters: Republicans create solutions where there weren't any problems: go after trans children and teacher's unions.

Education Matters: DCPS's @#&$ teachers attitude continues daily - https://jaxkidsmatter.blogspot.com/2021/04/dcpss-teachers-attitude-continues-daily.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+blogspot/iYxgC+(Education+Matters)

LOLGOP: The entire GOP is fixated on kids’ genitalia | Eclectablog

The entire GOP is fixated on kids’ genitalia | Eclectablog

The entire GOP is fixated on kids’ genitalia

It’s not just Matt Gaetz

The GOP’s failure when it comes to Covid-19 — which is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths, according to a Lancet commission— is even more unforgivable when you realize how effective and focused Republicans can be when it comes to something they care about, like stopping Black people from voting or bullying trans kids.

Arkansas has become the latest GOP-led state to frantically confront what the right sees as the most pressing problem in the midst of a pandemic that has killed almost 600,000 Americans and put almost 10 million out of work. That problem? Some trans kids possibly not feeling suicidal.

A bill signed into law on Tuesday by Governor Asa Hutchinson denies trans teens gender-affirming care and is the “the single most extreme anti-trans law to ever pass through a state legislature,” according to Chase Strangio, deputy director for transgender justice at the ACLU.

This is the most extreme poke of the spear from the GOP’s war on trans kids, which is generally fixated on “preserving” girls’ and women’s sports and stomping out the fictional scourge of trans competitors showing up and dominating the landscape. This scourge is so immense and urgent that Republicans either can’t produce any significant examples of it occurring.

Why is America’s right so concerned about the “fairness” of sports they’d never watch?

Their foray into making bathrooms the wedge issue they could nail trans people to has generally failed, thanks to effective activism that engineered a backlash to these sick laws that exist simply as a way to humiliate people Republicans have decided to bully for fun and profit.

The game here is obvious. Pretending concern for kids, especially the poor, “helpless” young female athletes of America, reinforces the “strict father” worldview that the right is built upon. It CONTINUE READING: The entire GOP is fixated on kids’ genitalia | Eclectablog