Teacher sues school district over name, pronoun policy

0
1371

A Geary County math teacher is suing the local school board for refusing to give her a religious exemption from a policy requiring teachers to use the preferred names and pronouns of transgender students.

Pamela Ricard, a teacher in the district since 2005, was suspended for three days last year for not referring to a student by their preferred name in violation of general district policies intended to prevent bullying and promote diversity and inclusion.

Ricard is asking a federal judge to declare those policies unconstitutional as well as a more recent policy that requires teachers to use students’ preferred names and pronouns.

She also wants her personnel file purged of any reference to the punishment school officials  imposed on her for expressing her views regarding gender identity.

Ricard says in the lawsuit that district policies for student names and pronouns are inconsistent with her Christian faith.

“Ms. Ricard believes that God created human beings as either male or female, that this sex is fixed in each person from the moment of conception, and that it cannot be changed, regardless of an individual person’s feelings, desires, or preferences,” the lawsuit says.

The district’s policies, the lawsuit says, put Ricard under the threat of discipline for not adhering to a policy she says infringes on the First Amendment and her Christian faith.

“Compelling Ms. Ricard to express that a female is a male by using male pronouns, or
vice versa, forces her to express a message on that matter of public concern and debate,” the lawsuit says.

“If students heard Ms. Ricard use a male pronoun to refer to a female student, or vice
versa, they would reasonably understand that Ms. Ricard was endorsing the idea that a person can change their sex, or that it is appropriate to refer to a female as a male, or vice versa,” the lawsuit said.

The school district had not responded to an email seeking comment Tuesday morning about the lawsuit.

The lawsuit comes at a time when the Kansas Legislature is debating a bill that would ban transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports – something the lawyers in the case said are coincidence.

Ricard, who teaches at Fort Riley Middle School, has been battling the school district over the issue for about a year.

During the spring semester of 2021, middle school administrators started issuing diversity
and equity training materials and sending emails to middle school teachers, directing them to use students’ preferred names in lieu of a student’s name as they were enrolled.

In April 2021, the district suspended Ricard for three days and issued a formal written reprimand for addressing a biologically female student by the student’s legal and enrolled last name, the lawsuit said.

Neither the district nor the school had a formal policy regarding student names and pronouns at the time Ricard was suspended, the lawsuit said.

The district’s discipline was based on generic school district policies related to staff bullying, diversity and inclusion and staff harassment of students.

When Ricard returned from suspension, the middle school principal sent documents to the staff on diversity training for gender identity and gender equity, the lawsuit said.

The new training materials and protocol mandated that teachers use students’ preferred names and pronouns when requested, the lawsuit said.

Failure to follow the mandate constituted discrimination and would lead to employee discipline, the lawsuit said.

Ricard asked for a religious accommodation to the policy that would allow her to continue to address students by their names but “refrain from using preferred pronouns or other gender-specific language for a student when such pronouns or language were different than the student’s biological sex.”

The request was denied.

During the 2021-2022 school year, the lawsuit says there have been other instances where teachers or staff have forgotten to use a student’s preferred pronoun without any disciplinary  action.

“The district and the defendants now threaten to punish Ms. Ricard again if she continues to refrain from using a student’s preferred pronouns, express her views through silence
or neutral language, or even engage in a neutral policy of referring to students by their enrolled last names or with other gender-neutral language,” the lawsuit said.

“Under district policies, all teachers must now refer to each student — both in and out of class — using whatever names or pronouns the student claims reflect his or her particular gender identity on any given day.”

This is not the first time the courts have been asked to address policies governing how teachers and staff should respond to transgender students in the classroom.

Last year, the Virginia Supreme Court ordered the reinstatement of a gym teacher who refused to refer to transgender students by their pronouns.

The Supreme Court upheld a lower-court ruling that Loudon County Public Schools violated the free speech rights of a teacher by suspending him after he talked about the issue at a school board meeting.

Also last year, the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that an Ohio professor could sue a university for violating constitutional rights after he was disciplined for refusing to use the pronouns of a transgender student.

Nicholas Meriwether, a philosophy professor at Shawnee State University in Portsmouth Ohio, sued the school after he was disciplined for refusing to follow a policy requiring the use of a student’s pronouns that match their gender identity.