Dive Brief:
-
Wisconsin's Rhinelander School District violated a nonbinary student's Title IX rights when it didn't properly address sex and gender-based harassment from other students and when multiple teachers used incorrect pronouns for the student, the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights found in a case resolved Thursday.
-
Instead of addressing the harassment from peers, the district changed the student's schedule to attend school in-person for three classes and take additional classes through self-directed virtual study, OCR said.
-
Rhinelander School District entered a voluntary resolution agreement, through which it said it is "committed to providing a benefit to all students instead of fighting over the merit of the allegations in the complaint."
Dive Insight:
The district was required by the OCR to determine whether compensatory services are necessary to address the harassed student’s missed instructional time, but said the student — who was described by the district as transgender — has since moved out of state and is no longer a student there.
OCR is also requiring the district to provide district-wide training on Title IX compliance, implement information programs for students to address sex-based harassment, and conduct a climate survey.
“We continuously provide training to our students and staff, so agreeing to provide
more training was a commitment we have already embraced. The District is committed to providing a safe environment for all students," said Eric Burke, superintendent of Rhinelander School District, in a statement to K-12 Dive.
The OCR's decision to double down on Title IX LGBTQ+ protections comes while its two proposed rules related to Title IX LGBTQ+ protections remain pending, with their final release expected in October.
Under the proposed rules, discrimination against LGBTQ+ students would for the first time be considered sex discrimination.
They build on previous consistent guidance and reminders from the department that it would take violations of LGBTQ+ protections seriously. In June 2021, prior to its proposed rule release that would codify such protections, the department issued a notice of interpretation announcing that Title IX protects the rights of LGBTQ+ students.
Just a week later, the department resolved a case similar to the one announced Thursday, in which a California district was found to have violated Title IX after a transgender student was repeatedly harassed because of her appearance, voice, body, name and pronouns.
A year later, in 2022, OCR fielded a record number of complaints, driven partly by an increase in LGBTQ+-related concerns.
Thursday's findings that the Wisconsin district violated Title IX in its treatment of an LGBTQ+ student amplifies the department's Title IX policy at a time when Republican leaders and lawmakers have repeatedly resisted its changes.
In 2022, Republican senators wrote U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona saying the administration's interpretation of Title IX would "weaponize Title IX to force a radical gender ideology in K-12 classrooms.” The senators also raised concerns about schools potentially violating Title IX by not using the pronouns used by the student.
Meanwhile, this past June, Texas sued the Education Department over its interpretation of Title IX protecting LGBTQ+ students. In its lawsuit, Texas' Office of Attorney General said the Biden administration's Title IX enforcement covering sexual orientation and gender identity misinterprets the civil rights law.
The lawsuit made good on a promise from 15 Republic state attorneys general in 2022, including Texas' Ken Paxton, to take legal action against the administration if it continued to enforce its LGBTQ+-inclusive interpretation of Title IX.
Thursday's case resolution also comes as spreading state laws have complicated student pronoun usage.
Almost half of states saw legislation introduced in the first three months of 2023 that would regulate student pronoun usage, according to an April count by the National Conference of State Legislatures.
A majority of those bills would prohibit school employees from using students' preferred pronouns if they don't align with their sex assigned at birth or their legal name, without first notifying parents or getting parental consent.
Dive Awards
