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Parents vs. Linn-Mar: This round goes to the parents
Call it a victory, because it is.
Althea Cole
Oct. 8, 2023 5:00 am
Parents of Linn-Mar students concerned that their children might be compelled to affirm beliefs with which they disagree can breathe a bit easier, thanks to a recent decision from a federal appeals court which ordered a preliminary injunction on the last intact part of the district’s controversial transgender student policy.
District policy 504.13, “Transgender and Students Nonconforming to Gender Role Stereotypes,” was passed in April 2022. Under the new policy, gender nonconforming students in Grades 7-12 would be permitted to use intimate spaces such as restrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their gender identity. It also established procedures for creating a “gender support plan” for a student who wished to assume a different name and gender identity, requiring the district to affirm that student’s chosen identity and conceal it from their parents if the student desired.
Additionally, the policy declared that each student had a “right to be addressed by” their chosen names and pronouns and considered refusal to “respect a student’s gender identity” to be a violation of the district’s anti-bullying and anti-harassment policy. Regulations for enforcing Linn-Mar’s anti-bullying/anti-harassment policy state that appropriate measures for disciplining a student found to be in violation may include suspension and even expulsion.
That last part of Linn-Mar’s 2022 policy is key in this latest clash between the Linn-Mar School District and concerned parents. To sum it up: Your twelve-year-old could get kicked out of school — for a good while — if they don’t want to bend the pages of the dictionary to indulge their peer who recently decided to adopt pronouns of “fae” and “faer” (which is an actual thing, apparently.)
Punishment that harsh, simply because they allegedly did not “respect” the other student’s “gender identity?” That’s a pretty absurd scenario. So absurd that surely it won’t actually happen … right? Or would it?
The real question is: Could it happen? Could Linn-Mar’s transgender policy really get a kid kicked out of school over something as trivial as stupid made-up pronouns? (Yes, I just opined that made-up pronouns are stupid. My inbox awaits your reply.) And if the district insists that such a ludicrous scenario wouldn’t actually happen under their policy, does the wording of the policy actually back that up?
Those and others are valid — and important — questions in the legal arena. Outraged by what they saw as an intrusion on their rights (and responsibilities) as parents, a group of Linn-Mar parents joined as participants last year in a lawsuit filed against the Linn-Mar Community School District by Parents Defending Education (PDE,) a nationwide group formed to stop the ideological takeover of K-12 education.
The parents’ first attempt at achieving their goal — to block enforcement of Linn-Mar’s transgender policy — was a swing and a miss. A District Court judge ruled in September 2022 that the parents hadn’t shown that the policy had actually hurt their children. PDE appealed, renewing their request to block enforcement of the policy. Arguments were heard before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in February. The appeals court issued their decision just over a week ago, on Sept. 29.
Most of PDE’s claims were still dismissed on appeal, but for a new reason — they were moot. Since the appeal was filed, much of Linn-Mar’s transgender policy had been halted in its tracks by legislative action at the Iowa Statehouse. Senate File 482, signed into law in March, set the requirement that all people in K-12 schools must use bathrooms, locker rooms and other intimate spaces that correspond with their sex. Senate File 496, signed in March, requires a school district to report a child’s request for a gender-affirming accommodation to the child’s parent or guardian.
Since those new laws provided the relief parents had sought regarding shared use of intimate spaces and “gender support plans” that keep concerned parents in the dark, the court found it unnecessary to weigh in on those issues.
But the issue of speech and expression remained — specifically, whether Linn-Mar’s policy violated a student’s right to each. The court found that part of the policy requiring students to “respect a student’s gender identity” was too vague.
Leaving the word “respect” undefined, wrote the court, “leaves the policy open to unpredictable interpretations, and creates a substantial risk that school administrators may arbitrarily enforce the policy.“
Parents’ concerns weren’t hypothetical. The appeals court concluded that at least one of PDE’s seven anonymous parents had standing to seek relief from the “respect” part of the policy. Parent G, as the court referred to one mother, asserted that her son wanted to be able to, as part of his studies at Linn-Mar, make statements such as that sex is an immutable characteristic and that distinct physical differences should preclude men from playing on women’s sports teams. (These were perfectly uncontroversial utterances until about five minutes ago.)
Yet because of Linn-Mar’s transgender policy, Student G didn’t feel he could say any of that, lest he violate a policy which, as the court agreed, carried a “credible threat of enforcement” that could include suspension and expulsion. However unlikely it might seem that simply saying boys can’t be girls and vice versa would lead to such harsh punishment, the lack of clarity in Linn-Mar’s policy led the kid to the same conclusion as the court — that it very well could.
So, the kid decided instead that he would have to keep his mouth shut “when gender identity topics arise.” And that, folks, is how you trample a person’s right to free expression. One way, at least.
Parent G and her son will get the relief PDE sought for them. The appeals court’s ruling grants a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the “respect” portion of Linn-Mar’s policy. Call it a victory, because it is.
That doesn’t mean that everything is coming up roses in the big picture. We still have to contend with how deeply absorbed our society has become in gender ideology. There are myriad paths down that rabbit hole, but in this context, let’s limit the scope to language. Our society is catering to people who cannot cope with something as simple as basic pronouns.
The obsession with pronouns is pervasive. Retail stores have begun allowing their staff to wear little buttons listing their pronouns, so you don’t make the ghastly mistake of referring to the girl at Starbucks as “her.” Staff at my local medical clinic wear “My pronouns are” stickers on their badges. The dating app on my phone, which lists my gender, reminds me that my bio isn’t complete because I haven’t selected my pronouns.
Professionals include their pronouns in their email signatures and when they introduce themselves at a meeting. When meetings go online, some put their pronouns next to their name on their Zoom account.
Yet the vast majority of those who "share“ their pronouns experience no gender variance themselves. They don’t need to proactively inform the not-inquiring public of their pronouns — they’re already obvious. If not for practical purposes, then, why do it? For participatory ones — to join your friends and colleagues in the happy spirit of diversity and inclusiveness. It’s all hearts and smiles and feelings over here.
But staking our pronouns also serves as a demarcation of sorts. It draws a line in a sense, even if unintentionally so. Sharing pronouns in one’s email signature doesn’t explicitly tell people to take a side, but it implies that there is a side to choose — and that one side is right, and the other is … not.
Gender identity activists, on the other hand, are demanding that people pick a side — not based on logic or common sense or the social norms that have been practiced for centuries or, I don’t know, the basics of spoken and written word, for crying out loud.
They’re the ones hijacking language to treat the “wrong” pronouns as slurs. They’re the ones want you to believe — and spread — the ludicrous notion that “misgendering” is an act of violence. They’re the ones who insist that anything less than compliance with their standards is bigotry. It’s the happy participants, however, believing that they’re acting in the warm spirit of inclusiveness, who are pushing for it to be codified into places like school districts.
That, dear readers, is how an institution of education becomes one of indoctrination.
It took legislative action and an order from a federal court of appeals for Linn-Mar parents to protect their kids from it. They get a victory in battle. The rest of us are still fighting a war. An ugly, pointless war.
Comments? 319-398-8266; althea.cole@thegazette.com
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