Big ruling yesterday from the Eleventh Circuit in another case dealing with transgender rights. A Florida statute forbids public school teachers from asking their students to call them by a name/title that doesn’t correspond to his or her sex (so, if the teacher is a man, the teacher can’t ask students to use “Ms.,” “Mrs.,” “she,” “her,” etc. when addressing him).
A teacher, Katie Wood, challenged the statute, arguing it violated her First Amendment rights. The trial court issued a preliminary injunction in her favor.
The Eleventh Circuit saw things differently and reversed. The court’s ruling hinged on a threshold question courts ask when a government employee’s freedom of speech is at issue: is the employee speaking as a “citizen" or as a "government employee"? If the answer is government employee, the First Amendment claim is dead. If the answer is citizen, more analysis is necessary. In the specific case of Wood, the court ruled that she had spoken as an employee. Critical to the court’s ruling was the location and timing of the speech at issue—Wood wanted students to use her preferred pronouns in the classroom during instruction hours. That, according to the court, meant she was speaking as a government employee, not a citizen.
Judge Newsom wrote the opinion and was joined by Judge Brasher. Judge Jordan dissented. He first said that the majority applied the wrong standard of review (he thinks it should have been abuse of discretion, not de novo). But he also wrote that the majority got the citizen/government employee ruling wrong, noting that “not every word uttered by a teacher in the classroom is the speech of the government.”
That’s a high-level overview, but there’s much more here than just that. If you want to have a read, the opinion is below.
Wood Case by John Byrne on Scribd
8 comments:
My personal pronouns are Pastrami on Rye
Cue the backwards, uninformed, and obliviously toxic comments from the boomers, who it's not even worth trying to explain trans concepts to. (One already slipped through).
Just remember nana, the internet is forever; history will be the judge of you. Gen z doesn't give two shits about the binary framework you need to feel ok inside.
Brilliance from Judge Jordan.
You are right and you are wrong.
The government has no business telling people how they should ask to be addressed. It is complete bullshit. This law, and others (including policies) being enacted are just fucked up, cruel and completely unnecessary. People who are gay, trans, bisexual, etc., should be able to live their lives free from any form of discrimination.
But you are wrong that the issue is boomers and that a biology doesn't matter.
The sports thing went way too far and was over the top. A guy who was a NCAA swimmer absolutely should be able to decide he is a woman, and be treated as a woman. But, that woman, who is a biological man (whether intact or not, boobs or not), should not then be able to compete against women in sporting events. The same is true for almost any other sport that has gendered categories, including high school sports.
This is not a boomer issue, and people are not out of touch or bigots because they feel this way. It is a issue of fundamental fairness. Biological women and girls should not be forced to compete against people who have more athletic capability because they were born biologically male.
Yes, there will be really difficult issues, for example Caster Semenya, who was treated unfairly, is one. And yes, some type of solution need to be had to make sure that if trans athletes want to compete in a category other than the one matching their biology, they can. Whether this means two additional categories (trans male and trans female), I do not know.
Ex. A.
O, the fucking sports thing. You drank the koolaide without even realizing it. Kudos to you for knowing these laws are fucked up. But your suggested "separate but equal" solution proves my point. I implore you to watch this and see that "biology" doesn't actually make a difference, uniformed 'popular' opinion notwithstanding. And then stop pretending you care about woman's sports to begin with.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flSS1tjoxf0
Suppose I am a public school teacher and" identify" as a dog and want my students to call me "it" and allow me to bark at them instead of calling them by name? I guess that is ok as it protects my freedom of speech.
1:08 please tell us who you are because that's quite possibly the dumbest thing that's ever been written on this blog.
Do you litigate with this kind of reasoning too? Yikes.
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