Parents Win: Federal Court Blocks Ohio School District’s Transgender Pronoun Policy
“The School District has not just entered this policy debate. It has taken a side. … [It] has ‘targeted’ a speaker’s use of biological pronouns as improper while allowing students to use preferred pronouns.”
A group of parents challenging their school district’s “misgendering” policy has been vindicated by a full panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Over the dissent of seven judges, the appellate court blocked the school policy. It held the parents are likely to succeed on their claim that the school district may not punish students solely for the use of biological pronouns at school.
Its ruling yesterday reverses the lower district court’s ruling against the parents.
We covered the case, Defending Ed[*] v. Olentangy School District, earlier here:
To recap briefly, last year, a parents group asked a full panel of the Sixth Circuit to rehear its challenge to the Olentangy school district’s “misgendering” policy. The organization, Parents Defending Education (PDE), appealed an earlier decision by the circuit’s three-judge panel denying their bid to block the school’s pronoun policy.
We’ve covered several other lawsuits over pronoun policies in schools, but they’ve all involved teachers who object to following rules that facilitate their students’ social transitioning.
In this case, it’s the students who are being told what they can and cannot say—and facing punishment if they disobey. And as the court noted yesterday, the school district’s ban on biological pronouns extends far beyond the classroom, reaching personal speech on social media off school grounds.
Under the Ohio school district’s anti-harassment and anti-bullying policies, students are prohibited from using their transgender classmates’ non-preferred pronouns. And it’s not just when they’re talking to their friends in class.
The school’s oversight extends to their conversations by phone or computer, forbidding them to communicate on their personal devices “in any way that might reasonably create in the mind of another person an impression of being threatened, humiliated, harassed, embarrassed or intimidated.” And, again, the policies apply whether the students are on or off school grounds, texting on their own time.
In 2023, PDE sued the school district over its sweeping policies, claiming, among other things, they constituted compelled speech and viewpoint descrimination in violation of the First Amendment. They also claimed that the school had not supported the policies with the constitutionally required evidence. When a school’s policies ban speech in these ways, the burden is on the school to show they’re necessary to avoid “substantial disruption” under the landmark case of Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District.
The district court rejected the parents’ claims, holding that the policies don’t compel speech or discriminate based on viewpoint.
The Sixth Circuit affirmed the decision, leaving the policies in place for the time being. Last year, the court granted PDE’s petition for rehearing, vacating its earlier decision.
Finally, yesterday, the full-panel court agreed with the parents that the school had presented no evidence at all that the use of biological pronouns would disrupt school functions or violate anyone’s rights—falling “far short” of Tinker’s demanding standard:
Our society continues to debate whether biological pronouns are appropriate or offensive—just as it continues to debate many other issues surrounding transgender rights. The school district may not skew this debate by forcing one side to change the way it conveys its message or by compelling it to express a different view.
“Even more concerning from a First Amendment perspective,” the court added, is that “the School District has not just entered this policy debate. It has taken a side. The School District has ‘targeted’ a speaker’s use of biological pronouns as improper while allowing students to use preferred pronouns (no matter how novel).”
Judge Alice Batchelder concurred with the court’s result, but sharply disagreed with its reasoning.
Concerned that, on remand, the lower court will read it the wrong way, she emphasized that “insofar as any language in the opinion would have Tinker apply to Defending Education’s compelled-speech or viewpoint-discrimination claims, that is not the law”:
Under the Supreme Court’s cases, there is no amount of Tinker evidence that would permit a school to compel student speech or to ban student speech on a matter of public concern based solely on its viewpoint. Therefore, as this case returns to the district court on remand, even if the School District were to produce overwhelming evidence of disruption, that evidence would still not justify the compelled-speech or viewpoint-discrimination aspects of its preferred-pronoun policies. [emphasis added]
Be that as it may, yesterday’s decision blocks the school transgender pronoun policy as the lawsuit plays out in the lower district court.
And now, for the second time in a week, a federal appeals court has reinforced the boundaries on a school’s authority to regulate student speech, even when it’s “controversial.”
[*] Formerly “Parents Defending Ed.”
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Comments
It’s not the school’s concern what a student says outside the school. An employee, maybe, if the employee clearly connects him/her self with the schools when saying something. Olentangy School District can mind its own business.
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Effectively the school district has chosen to practice medicine without a license. By forcing other students to participate in the schools preferred “mental health treatment protocol”, they have effectively prescribed a mental health treatment ( albeit a very bad mental health treatment). As such, the school district is practicing medicine without a license.
My oldest daughter graduated from Olentangy High School, glad I got my 2 younger ones out of there before this nonsense; much better down here in middle Tennessee.
What a wicked world we live in
Wicked witch of the West was right
K-12 public schools these days can’t teach basic educational needs such as reading, writing and arithmetic, but they do a great job at indoctrination. Milton Friedman once remarked that government paid for education doesn’t have to be public education. It is well past time to reconsider to a voucher-based private education system.
Not just “these days”. The government schools have always been used to indoctrinate children at the expense of their parents and other taxpayers.
Watch out for vouchers though. They come with strings. Even in Florida, Christian schools are required to submit their students to Florida State testing.
Test
I am honestly surprised that none of the parents have taken this into their own hands
You’ll love this
https://redstate.com/chase-spears/2025/11/07/army-professor-wages-information-war-on-school-board-conservatives-n2195801
The point still missed is that the use of imaginary pronouns is the controversal issue.
Can someone please point me to the documents that define my rights not to be threatened, humiliated, harassed, embarrassed, or intimidated. When I was in elementary school, I was required to sing in a student performance. Now, I sing about as well as Hilary Clinton runs high hurdles. I was a victim of all of the above insults, but no one seemed to care about my feelings. I learned a valuable lesson, one I have kept to this day–don’t sing in public. Bullying and shame were parts of our everyday life and served well their purpose of moderating aberrant behavior. I’ll vote often for any politician who runs on a platform of bringing back shame and bullying.
Cult like policy. You can’t share your own thoughts about someone outside of their earshot?
According to the fake barrister, you should just enable the mentally ill because it’s the nice thing to do.
How will this decision square with the California Supreme Court ruling earlier this week that states that the improper use of pronouns can be criminalized?