The wokeness battle has been raging on in school districts throughout the country this year but the Loudoun County Public Schools district in Virginia tends to grab more headlines than most. It epitomizes everything that is wrong with public education in America, especially in that the teachers in the district fight harder to get their students indoctrinated with leftist insanity than they do to teach the kids anything useful.
Stacey wrote a post last March revealing that teachers in the district worked with county officials to compile an enemies list of parents who dared question Critical Race Theory. The intent was to launch a cyber harassment campaign against the parents.
Nice people, right?
In June, Tyler wrote about a PE teacher in Loudoun County who was suspended two days after giving a heartfelt explanation to the Loudoun County School Board about why his religious convictions precluded him from using transgender pronouns:
Update: Cross has sued the Loudoun County school district. Read that story here.
Last week, a physical education teacher at Leesburg Elementary in Leesburg, Va., dared to speak out against a policy that would require teachers to endorse transgender identity by using female pronouns to refer to male students and vice versa. Less than two days later, the school suspended him pending an investigation and forbade him from setting foot on school property without special permission. A Christian law firm has taken up his case and the situation has sparked a new feud between a local pastor and the local Democratic Party.
“My name is Tanner Cross, and I am speaking out of love for those who suffer with gender dysphoria,” Byron [Tanner] Cross, the PE teacher at Leesburg Elementary, said during the public comment segment of a Loudoun County school board meeting on Tuesday. “Sixty Minutes this past Sunday interviewed over 30 young people who transitioned but they felt led astray because lack of pushback or how easy it was to make physical changes to their bodies in just three months. They are now detransitioning.”
Cross condemned LCPS Policy 8040 and the proposed changes to LCPS Policy 8350, which would require teachers to refer to students by preferred gender pronouns, rather than the pronouns that correspond to a student’s biological sex as male or female.
Tyler notes at the top of his post that Cross sued the district. A court ordered that he be reinstated but the lunatic leftist brain trust running the district appealed that decision.
The Supreme Court of Virginia has now backed the lower court.
NPR:
RICHMOND, Va. — The Supreme Court of Virginia has upheld a lower court ruling that ordered the reinstatement of a northern Virginia gym teacher who said he won’t refer to transgender students by their pronouns.
Loudoun County Public Schools appealed to the state Supreme Court after a judge ruled that the school system violated the free speech rights of teacher Tanner Cross by suspending him after he spoke up at a school board meeting.
Unfortunately, this saga isn’t completely over yet:
The school system said it suspended Cross in part because his comments caused a disruption at the school. But the lower court judge, James Plowman, and the state Supreme Court agreed that the handful of calls fielded by school administrators did not cause the type of disruption that warranted a suspension.
Tuesday’s ruling leaves in place a temporary injunction that bars the school system from suspending Cross. A trial is scheduled for next week in Loudoun County to settle the issue permanently.
Since Cross filed his lawsuit in May, two additional teachers in Loudoun County have joined him as plaintiffs.
Now that the Democrats have set up a permanent residence on the far-left fringe, much of what they do seems like it won’t hold up to a legal challenge. Those, unfortunately, are expensive. And judges, as we know, are motivated by politics despite their constant assurances that they aren’t.
Still, these battles have a far better chance of a fair resolution when fought in court rather than the leftmedia-dominated public opinion forum.
Godspeed to Mr. Cross next week.
Source: PJ Media
