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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