AVirginia school district that allegedly socially transitioned a “gender-nonconfirming” 14-year-old girl into a boy’s identity, hid it from her legal parents, told her to use the boys’ restroom even after boys started threatening her, and “pressured her to recant” those threat claims, will have to defend itself again in trial court.
A split panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the lawsuit by Michele Blair, who with her husband adopted their granddaughter Sage at age 2 from foster care, where she had been placed after her father’s death and mother’s inability to raise her.
But it dismissed all but her Title IX “deliberate indifference” claim against the Appomattox County School Board, Superintendent Annette Bennett and its staff and contract counselors, and a dissent accused the majority of “push[ing] past the boundaries” set by the Supreme Court in student-on-student sexual harassment cases.
While the school board was “not entirely unresponsive” to Sage’s threat claims, giving her access to the nurse’s restroom, that falls short of “reasonably calculated” efforts to end her harassment, simply addressing it “in piecemeal,” wrote President Clinton-nominated Judge Roger Gregory, joined by President Biden nominee Judge DeAndrea Benjamin.
The court record shows “no indication” the board took action against the boys on the bus who allegedly “threatened her with sexual violence,” another group of males who “jacked” Sage against the wall and threatened her with violence, or students who “threatened to shoot” her “and told her they knew where she lived,” the majority says.
“In fact, the direct opposite happened” when school counselor Dena Olsen and deputy sheriff Daniel Gunter allegedly interrogated her and tried to get her to take back her claims that the boys were threatening her, Gregory wrote. Olsen had first told Sage to use the boys’ restroom and to go back when other girls reportedly complained about her in the girls’ restroom.
Even after being told to use the nurse’s restroom, Sage “continued to be so fearful for her and her family’s life that she ‘suffered a psychotic breakdown’ and opted to run away from home to save her family,” the majority said.
Hellbound and Down 