In August 2024, Parents Defending Education (PDE) asked the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit to rehear its lawsuit against Ohio’s Olentangy Local School District Board of Education; this request is called a petition for rehearing “en banc.” A three-judge panel had ruled 2–1 that the district’s policies, which require students to use other students’ “preferred pronouns,” do not violate the First Amendment.
PDE’s petition argued:
- Pronouns carry a message. The panel itself agreed that “pronouns matter.” For students who believe “sex cannot be changed,” being forced to use pronouns that “affirm” a different gender identity would violate their deep convictions.
- The ruling breaks from the court’s own past decisions. In Meriwether v. Hartop (2021), the Sixth Circuit held that a public university “flouted” the First Amendment when it punished a professor for not using a student’s preferred pronouns. The court said this “struggle over the social control of language” must be settled by persuasion, not force. Judge Batchelder’s dissent warned that the panel’s decision “confin[es Meriwether] to its facts” and “creates a circuit split.”
- The ruling harms all parents. Under the decision, public schools can now force children to use other students’ preferred pronouns, and parents have no way to send their children to public schools where students aren’t forced to repeat the government’s views on sex and gender.
PDE asked the full court to decide a question “of significant public concern”: whether school policies requiring students to use other students’ “preferred pronouns” violate the First Amendment.
Read the petition below:
