A Minnesota school district agreed to a $218,500 settlement with a former student who claimed that she was discriminated against when her school did not allow her to access the boys’ locker room and restroom. In 2015, Helene Woods’s daughter, who had begun using masculine pronouns and adopted the name Matt, informed officials at the Buffalo-Hanover-Montrose School District that she wanted to use the boys’ restroom and locker rooms. The school refused, instead arranging for “Matt” Woods to use a single-occupancy bathroom and changing room. This, however, did not solve the situation. In 2019, Helene Woods filed a lawsuit against the District on behalf of her daughter. This week the District agreed to a settlement in the case.
In a statement, the District said that it has not admitted to any wrongdoing. Nor should it! The school district took steps to accommodate Woods when she brought up her discomfort, and did so in a manner that did not compromise the privacy of other students. However, as part of the settlement, Buffalo-Hanover-Montrose School District agreed to policy changes that allow students access to bathrooms and locker rooms and compete on sports teams that match their self-professed “gender identity” rather than their biological sex.
These policies prioritize the preferences of a few students over the privacy of their classmates, as well as threatening to rob female athletes of opportunities by forcing them to compete against biological males. Students deserve to be treated with dignity and have their basic privacy rights respected, and they should not be silenced or stigmatized for raising concerns about school policies that infringe those rights or that remove fairness from athletic competitions. Furthermore, when schools adopt policies that embrace the transgender agenda, they affirm dangerous lies that cause lasting damage to young people. Even though the District defended their decision to protect student privacy, they accepted a settlement that puts the demands of the transgender lobby ahead of the well-being of their students.
The Buffalo-Hanover-Montrose settlement comes just a few months after the Anoka-Hennepin School District agreed to a similar settlement and also agreed to adopt policies allowing students to choose locker rooms based on their “gender identity” rather than their biological sex.
Image: Buffalo Community Middle School via Facebook
