A New Hampshire teenager has filed a lawsuit against his school after he was suspended for violating the district’s non-binary gender identity and pronouns policy.
The Exeter High School freshman was purportedly made to sit out one football game after saying there are “only two genders,” and denying the existence of non-binary gender identities, according to the New York Post. The conversation in question is reported to have started on a school bus.
The student filed his suit on Nov. 4, with his attorney claiming that the student’s Catholic background only permits him to view two genders: male and female. The lawsuit also alleges that the school’s policy regarding gender identity and pronouns intrudes on the student’s First Amendment right.
The student was allegedly suspended after discussing gender with friends on a school bus, and saying that it’s hard to use plural pronouns in Spanish since the language uses female and male pronouns. Another student heard their conversation and said there are more than two genders, to which the suspended student said, “No there isn’t. There’s only two genders.”
The conversation moved to text messages and was “contentious,” which school officials viewed. The school’s policy says that students can go by any name or pronoun they want, and those who don’t recognize their pronouns are breaking policy. The student agrees that he did violate the policy, and is doing so based on his own religious beliefs.
“He in fact denied, and will continue to deny, that any person can belong to a gender other than that of ‘male’ or ‘female’” the lawsuit reads. The student “will never refer to any individual person using plural pronouns such as ‘they,’ using contrived pronouns such as ‘ze,’ or with any similar terminology that reflects values which (the student) does not share.”
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