In February 2025, Parents Defending Education filed a reply brief before the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in its lawsuit against Ohio’s Olentangy Local School District. The brief answers each of the district’s defenses of its pronoun policies:
- Title IX: The federal rule that required preferred pronouns has been struck down, and the federal government now respects students’ “freedom to express the binary nature of sex.”
- State law: Ohio itself opposes the district in this case, and state law rejects the idea that a student’s stated gender identity must be automatically affirmed.
- Student speech precedent: The district cites Tinker, the Supreme Court’s landmark student speech case, but never actually makes its argument under it. Its pronoun rules also undercut Tinker’s lesson that the nation’s future depends on leaders trained through “wide exposure to that robust exchange of ideas.”
PDE asks the court to reverse the lower court and bar the district from punishing students for “purposefully referring to another student by using gendered language they know is contrary to the other student’s identity.”
Read the full brief below:
