Intersex teacher in Florida says school fired him based on belief he was trans

This story originally appeared on Them.

Shepard Scalf, a Florida teacher who is intersex, is alleging in a new Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filing that his school district fired him because they perceived him as transgender. Scalf was assigned female at birth but identifies as male, per the Monday filing.

In the filing, Scarf claims that, at the same time he was fired, he was told that his performance as a Language Arts teacher at Patriot Oaks Academy in the St. Johns County School District was “exemplary,” and that there was no “merits-based justification” for his termination. Scalf taught sixth grade and had been newly hired for the 2025-2026 school year.

“At the same time, the district knew both that I have a male gender identity (they gave me a placard saying ‘Mr. Scalf’) and that I was assigned female at birth (based on my employment paperwork),” Scarf wrote. “I therefore believe this termination was based on the perception that I am transgender.”

Just three weeks into the new school year, principal Drew Chiodo, allegedly called Scalf in for an “emergency meeting” held on August 29, 2025, per the filing. Scalf says he attended the meeting with a representative from the teacher’s union; at the meeting, Chiodo allegedly read a letter from the superintendent, Dr. Brennan Asplen.

Per the filing, the letter from Asplen claimed that, due to Scalf being a first-year teacher, his employment was “probationary” and could be dismissed without cause. The letter said he would be placed on temporary leave following a board meeting. Scalf says he was given the choice to accept the probationary release or voluntarily resign. Scalf resigned after being told by the union rep that a resignation would be better for his future career prospects than a termination, according to the EEOC filing.

“Receiving this ultimatum was confusing and overwhelming. Everything had been going so well — I couldn’t understand why this was happening,” Scalf told the ACLU. “The start of a school year is always brimming with promise and excitement, and I was looking forward to continuing my teaching career at Patriot Oaks until I was cornered into resigning. It became clear to me that being fired had nothing to do with my qualifications or teaching — it was about who I am.”

After his resignation, Scalf says he received evidence that his termination was due to a parent complaining that he was transgender, per the filing.

The ACLU is arguing that St. Johns County School District violated Scalf’s rights under Title VII, which was interpreted to include LGBTQ+ people through the 2020 Supreme Court case Bostock v. Clayton County.

Intersex is an umbrella term that refers to people who carry variations in their reproductive and sexual anatomy that differ from what is traditionally considered “male” or “female.” For example, an intersex person could have one set of genitalia internally and another externally, while also having differing sets of chromosomes. Some people can have ambiguous genitalia and might not know they are intersex at birth. While the medical diagnosis has been in use since the early 1900s, intersex advocates pushed in the 1970s to have the status be recognized as an identity and a community, rather than strictly a medical classification.

“Like any other worker, an intersex employee’s talents and contributions should be what counts — not others’ biased beliefs about who ‘counts’ as male or female,” Sylvan Fraser Anthony, the legal & policy director at interACT, an intersex advocacy group, told the ACLU. “Intersex employees like Mr. Scalf deserve to be valued and respected at work, and they are equally entitled to the protection of Title VII. Punishing someone because of a variation in their sex characteristics or perceived nonconformity with the sex they were assigned at birth is plainly impermissible, and employers must understand that these forms of sex discrimination will have consequences.”

When contracted by Them, Christina H. Upchurch, executive director for community relations at St. Johns County School District, wrote, “We will not comment on pending litigation.”

While LGBTQ+ workers have federal nondiscrimination protections — which the Trump administration seems loath to enforce — state-level protections vary widely and, in the case of Florida, can even change drastically from county to county. In 2021, prior to the election of Ron DeSantis, the Florida Commission on Human Relations affirmed that LGBTQ+ people statewide are protected from workplace discrimination. However, following DeSantis’s election to the governorship, LGBTQ+ rights in the state have eroded to the point that nonprofit Equality Florida issued a travel advisory for queer and trans people looking to visit.