Chris Lange, FISM News
A New Hampshire student athlete and his mother are suing a school district and vice principal for suspending him from the football team for saying there are “only two genders.”
According to a Daily Mail report, the Exeter High School freshman, identified as “M.P.” in court documents, made the comment to a classmate while riding on a school bus. Another student who disagreed with the comment began arguing with him via text messaging, the contents of which were submitted to school authorities. M.P. was then pulled out of one of his morning classes by Assistant Principal Marcy Dovholuk and the school’s athletic director and varsity football coach, Bill Ball. The two school administrators told the child that his comments violated the school’s transgender policy and punished him with a one-week suspension from the football team.
According to the lawsuit, Dovholuk and Ball stated that the texts showed that M.P. was ‘not respecting pronouns’ and that he needed to ‘respect how people identify.’” Ball later reduced the ban to one game when the student’s mother insisted he had done nothing wrong. According to the complaint, the football coach replied, “I know, but times are changing.”
The lawsuit, which was filed in Rockingham Superior Court on Nov. 4, argues that school officials wrongfully suspended the student in violation of his constitutional right to free speech and the New Hampshire Bill of Rights. M.P., who is Catholic, and his mother are seeking nominal damages for the suspension and argue that the school’s transgender policy is designed to penalize students with deeply-held religious beliefs against multiple-gender ideology.
“The student does not deny that he violated the Gender Nonconforming Students policy,” reads a portion of the lawsuit. “He in fact denied, and will continue to deny, that any person can belong to a gender other than that of ‘male’ or ‘female.’” It goes on to state that the plaintiff will not refer to other students as “‘they’ or ‘ze,’ or with any similar terminology that reflects values which [the student] does not share.”
The school’s transgender policy, adopted in 2016, states that a “student has the right to be addressed by a name and pronoun that corresponds to the student’s gender identity.” Any student who exhibits an “intentional or persistent refusal” to address classmates by their preferred pronouns are considered to be in violation of that policy.
The argument between the students was precipitated by a discussion about gender pronouns that arose during a Spanish class attended by M.P. According to court documents, a student in the class who identifies as “non-binary” used the singular pronoun “they” during a portion of the class in which students were asked to introduce themselves. M.P. entered into a discussion on the topic with other students on his bus after school, which subsequently proceeded to text-messaging.
In addition to violating the school’s transgender policy, M.P. was also advised by Dovholuk and Ball that language he used in his text messages, such as “bozo” and “stfu,” was “inappropriate.”
The student’s attorney, however, argues that school officials did not have authority to punish him based on language used in “an off-campus conversation that was started by another student.”
In response to a request for comment by the Daily Mail, school Superintendent David Ryan advised that he and other school officials “are in the process of reviewing this complaint with legal counsel and will be able to share a statement once we have completed that review.”