Score another one for the good guys. Some folks have to learn the hard way about bigotry.
From The Missouri Independent:
An appellate court unanimously ruled Tuesday that a transgender man who formerly attended the Blue Springs School District was discriminated against when he was barred from using the boys' locker room. After a decade-long legal battle, a transgender man and former student of the Blue Springs School District should receive over $4 million in damages for discrimination that occurred when he was an adolescent, the Missouri’s Western District Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday.
Judge Anthony Gabbert wrote the court’s unanimous decision, ruling that the school district discriminated against the student, identified by his initials R.M.A., on the basis of sex when it barred him from using the boys’ locker room. A key part of the appellate court’s decision was the factor that spurred the school district’s discrimination. Attorneys for the Blue Spring School District did not contest that R.M.A. was treated differently, according to Gabbert’s ruling, but said it was because of his “female genitalia.”
“School district employees suggested that R.M.A. had been excluded from the boys’ restrooms and locker rooms because of [the] school district’s belief that he had female genitalia,” Gabbert wrote. “[The] school district did not actually determine the nature of R.M.A.’s genitalia, however, and does not speculate, inspect or otherwise inquire as to the genitalia of other male students.”
The admission of different treatment based on assumed genitalia, Gabbert wrote, was itself discrimination on the basis of sex.
