The only thing that should have been required to save the T‑shirt?
An apostrophe.
The T‑shirt boldly proclaimed “Save Girls* Sports.”
But matters were more complicated for students of Martin Luther King Jr. High School in Riverside, California, who wore the shirts to protest their school’s decision to let a boy claiming to be a girl join the girls’ cross-country team.
The school sent students wearing the shirt to detention, allegedly for violating the dress code. Two of the girls who wore it said that school administrators compared the wearing of it to wearing a T‑shirt with a swastika.
Those two students and their families sued the school and school district on constitutional grounds.
Maybe it was the lawsuit, or maybe it was the show of solidarity — but something caused MLK High to cave. And hundreds of other students did show up wearing the “Save Girls Sports” T‑shirt, willing to buck the dress code or thought code, whatever it is, to support their classmates.
Somehow the school failed to place these hundreds of students in detention and has apparently dropped the detention policy.
Students at other schools in the area had also started wearing the T‑shirts.
With regard to the policy of letting boys play on girls’ sports teams, the Riverside Unified School District says that its hands are tied. “RUSD is bound to follow California law,” which requires letting students “participate in sex-segregated” activities in a way “consistent with his or her gender identity.”
Laws are meant to be changed, however, if not through California’s legislature, then through the state’s citizen initiative process.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* We leave the [sic] for the title.
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3 replies on “Girls [sic] Sports Saved”
“RUSD is bound to follow California law,” which requires letting students “participate in sex-segregated” activities in a way “consistent with his or her gender identity.”
California legislators don’t know proper grammar. With plural nouns, you use plural pronouns. Since the state referred to ‘students’, it should have later referred to ‘their’ gender identity..
The problem is in incorporation of a quotation.
The law reads “A pupil shall be permitted to participate in sex-segregated school programs and activities, including athletic teams and competitions, and use facilities consistent with his or her gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the pupil’s records.”
Rather than falsify the quotation, the wrapping language should have been changed: “It is important to remember that RUSD is bound to follow California law which requires that each student be ‘permitted to participate in sex-segregated school programs and activities, including athletic teams and competitions consistent with his or her gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the pupil’s records’.”
School administrators are enforcing the state religion. Because the policies that they are pushing have no scientific basis, so have to be more of a matter of faith. They believe in the rules being enforced by the government that are based on unsubstantiated philosophy and shifting political popularity with no actual scientific studies to back them up. Which sounds like a religion. Which the government is constitutionally prohibited from imposing.