Image Credit: Williamson County Schools
The Tennessee Conservative [By Adelia Kirchner] –
As Tennessee lawmakers continue to pass crucial legislation to protect female-specific and male-specific spaces in Tennessee public schools and in Tennessee sports, a U.S. District Court Judge has dismissed several of the claims brought forward in a transgender child and parents’ lawsuit against the Tennessee Department of Education and the Williamson County Board of Education.
The lawsuit was filed in the District Court for Middle Tennessee back in August of 2022 by “D.H.” a now 9-year-old boy who reportedly identifies as a “transgender girl”, and by D.H.’s “next friends A.H., mother, and E.H father.”
The child was eight years old and starting third grade at a Williamson County School at the time the lawsuit was filed.
The 9-year-old boy reportedly uses “she/her” pronouns and “lives socially as a girl.”
In May 2021, the Tennessee Accommodations for All Children Act became public chapter, requiring public schools “to the extent practicable” to provide a “reasonable accommodation” to students, teachers, or employees who desire “greater privacy” when using a multi-occupancy restroom or changing room located in a public-school building that has been designated for his or her sex.
This Act defines sex as “a person’s immutable biological sex as determined by anatomy and genetics existing at the time of birth.”
It also gives students, parents or legal guardians of students, teachers and employees the “private right of action” to sue a public school system for “psychological, emotional, and physical harm” and monetary compensation if they encounter a member of the opposite sex in a public school’s multi-occupancy restroom or changing room and the public school intentionally allowed that member of the opposite sex to enter said room while other individuals were present.
D.H. v. Williamson County Board of Education challenged the Accommodations for All Children Act, seeking to enjoin enforcement of the Act “or any other law, custom, or policy” that would prevent the 9-year-old boy from using restrooms, changing rooms, or multi-occupancy sleeping quarters designated for girls.
The suit also claimed violation of the plaintiff’s Title IX rights and sought to require that all school records be “corrected” to reflect the 9-year-old boy’s “female gender.”
Now in May of 2024, U.S. District Court Judge William Campbell has “GRANTED in part, and DENIED in part,” motions from the various defendants to dismiss the plaintiff’s claims.
Judge Campbell granted a request to dismiss the claim that the 9-year-old boy’s Title IX rights were violated under the ruling that since federal law allows schools to have separate restrooms for “the different sexes,” a school’s requirement that the plaintiff use a restroom based on biological sex is not a violation of Title IX.
The plaintiff’s request for an injunction against the school district to stop it from enforcing state law and their request for all records to reflect the child’s “female gender” were also dismissed.
However, Judge Campbell did deny the state’s request to dismiss the plaintiff’s claim of a violation of rights under the Equal Protection Clause which prevents states from “denying to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws” to avoid government discrimination that “burdens a fundamental right, targets a suspect class or intentionally treats one differently than others similarly situated without any rational basis for the difference.”
The judge’s ruling notes to that end, that “classifications based on sex […] have long been recognized as a quasi-suspect classification subject to intermediate scrutiny.”
About the Author: Adelia Kirchner is a Tennessee resident and reporter for the Tennessee Conservative. Currently the host of Subtle Rampage Podcast, she has also worked for the South Dakota State Legislature and interned for Senator Bill Hagerty’s Office in Nashville, Tennessee. You can reach Adelia at adelia@tennesseeconservativenews.com.
5 Responses
In my own opinion, It is a shame the Judge did not order a psychiatric evaluation of the parents of this child.
The only place this so-called scrutiny has come into play is in the Judge’s own mind. If you sport make genitalia, you use a private bathroom or the one designated for male. Same goes if you sport female genitalia. Any other way of handling this does a disservice to the majority who don’t have a problem with the way their put together. What Biden and the rest of the left wings idiots are doing is endangering both sexes. A female in a boy’s locker room can find herself in a bad situation. A male in a women’s locker room just begs for perverts to take advantage of the idiocy.
The people who bully transgender children or who use so-called conversion therapy over gender non-conforming children are the REAL predators. Conversion therapy centers hire sex predators to degrade transgender and gay patients to drive them to suicide or worse. These staff members belong in jail along with the legislators who passed these Tennessee laws. While we are on the subject of child abuse, these I.C.E. and D.E.A. officials who separate children in detention centers from their parents and who molest children in their custody also belong in prison. This practice of forcibly separating children from loving parents harks back to the antebellum slave era when white slaveowners, despite their lip service to family values, would forcibly break up the black family unit for selfish personal gain.
The child should be removed from these WORTHLESS parents who have abused and brain washed this child. A third grader hardly knows their ABC’s must less being capable to determine to be a trans freak while destroying their life.
The real abusers are Lee and his Republican pals along with the staff members at conversion therapy centers who disguise their sexual offenses as therapeutic aid for children in their charge.
Forcing a teacher to “out” a trans-student will simply expose that student to further abuse and danger from conservative parents, from peers, and from other sources. The REAL intention of the framers of anti-trans laws is to drive trans-children to suicide or to expose them to further abuse and molestation.