The idea of mandating what pronouns you're required to use for an individual seems like the most ridiculous thing any group of people could waste their time on, and yet, it happens. It happens far too often, and while it's bad for a business or some other organization people are part of voluntarily, it's worse when it's a school district.
And that's what happened in Ohio, only for the ridiculous idea to get slapped down.
On Thursday, the Sixth Circuit ruled on a case brought by a group of parents over the district's pronoun policy, and it didn't work out well for the district.
A divided federal appeals court in Ohio ruled against the state's fourth largest school district on Thursday in a case that pitted its gender pronoun policies against the rights of students who believe there are only two genders.
The full Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the suburban Olentangy Local School District cannot prohibit students from using gender-related language deemed offensive by others, siding with Parents Defending Education, which had argued the policies were unconstitutional.
The national membership organization first filed suit against Olentangy in 2023, saying the district's policies requiring the use of peers' “preferred pronouns” were a violation of students’ rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The district argued the rules were aimed to prevent bullying and discrimination.
The lawsuit had captured broad national attention, with a number of conservative policy groups, the American Civil Liberties Union and Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Hindu rights organizations lining up against the policy and leading LGBTQ+ rights and schools groups lining up generally in defense of it.
The court found the district “has fallen far short” of meeting the standard that allowing such speech would “materially and substantially disrupt” school activities or infringe the legal “rights of others” in the school community.
The idea of trying to mandate what pronouns someone uses for someone else is stupid, in part because it's trying to control your speech, even if the other person isn't around. It's especially bad, though, because it hinges on what someone said was offensive.
And really, I've seen some terrible examples, including a friend being called racist because she referred to Chinese communists as "chicoms." You know, like many millions of people have? Yeah.
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So it's not hard to see anything getting labeled as offensive gendered language if someone just doesn't like it.
Then we have the fact that telling people which pronoun they have to use goes against their own First Amendment protections, both freedom of speech and freedom of religion. It means a devoutly Christian student who doesn't agree with the whole LGBT narrative would not be permitted to act according to their own conscience, simply because someone else might get butthurt over it.
The Sixth Circuit made the right call, though I don't know if this will be the end of it or not.
I kind of hope the district takes this to the Supreme Court, because then these rules dictating pronoun use throughout the country would probably get thrown out, and just watching the left's heads explode like the end of the first Kingsman movie would be amazing to behold.
