North Carolina's 'don't say gay' law and anti-trans sports statute challenged by activists

The Campaign for Southern Equality has filed a complaint with the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice, saying new North Carolina laws are creating a hostile environment for LGBTQ+ students.

The complaint addresses two laws passed last year through legislators’ override of Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto. Senate Bill 49, characterized by its supporters as a “parents’ bill of rights,” limits instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools and forces staffers to out transgender students to their parents. House Bill 574 bars trans girls and women from competing in female sports in public schools and some private ones, plus both public and private colleges.

The laws violate Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the federal law banning sex discrimination in educational programs, the complaint says. The Department of Education has interpreted Title IX to include discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The statutes also violate North Carolina schools’ obligation to provide every student with a safe school environment free from discrimination, according to the Campaign for Southern Equality.

“North Carolina’s public schools are systematically marginalizing lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) students in violation of Title IX,” says the complaint, filed Tuesday with the DOE’s Office for Civil Rights as well as the Department of Justice. “Under the leadership of the North Carolina State Board of Education (SBE) and the Department of Public Instruction (DPI), local school districts are barring LGBTQ-affirming content, outing transgender students, erecting barriers to LGBTQ students receiving needed health care at school as well as support from educators, and prohibiting transgender girls from playing athletics consistent with their gender identity.”

The state laws “place educators in an impossible position,” it continues. “They must choose between, on the one hand, following state leaders’ orders or, on the other hand, federal and state legal obligations as well as their professional obligations to their students.

“Testimonials offered by students, parents, educators, administrators, and school board members reveal these pernicious mandates are already harming students: culls of curriculum and libraries; students forced back into the closet; students walled off from supportive services and outlets beneficial to their mental health; and a pall of fear cast over the whole of the state’s public education system.”

The complaint is based on information gathered from more than 100 North Carolinians, including students, parents, teachers, school administrators, and school board members.

Among the information they offered, according to a Campaign for Southern Equality press release: One district pulled out of a partnership with the local public library that provided library cards for all district students, because the library privileges could allow students access to books that may include LGBTQ+ themes. An adviser of a Gender and Sexuality Alliance feels forced to leave the room during meetings when conversation turns to students’ personal identities so that the adviser does not learn about a student’s LGBTQ+ identity and be required to out them.

“I am a transgender student, and I have been out at school for 2 years (since 8th grade),” says a student quoted in the complaint. “My parents are not accepting of me and have not allowed me to use my name in the classroom. I came out secretly to my teachers in 9th grade, and this made me feel a lot safer at school. This new ‘Parents’ Bill of Rights’ has made it mandatory for my teachers to tell my parents the fact that I use a different name and pronouns. My parents disapproved, of course, and it was a fight for me to be able to be who I am in a place that I’m in almost every day. I already suffer from mental health issues like depression, gender dysphoria, and anxiety, and the ongoing battle of trans rights (MY rights) aren’t making it any better. Although I can ‘freely’ use my name and pronouns in the classroom now (my parents still disapprove), the idea that transgender students have to be forcefully outed, even if school personnel are against it, is ludicrous. The NC state legislature should be ashamed of the harm they are inadvertently causing trans kids like me.”

The Campaign for Southern Equality asks for the DOE and/or the DOJ to issue a determination that SB 49 and HB 574 violate Title IX, convey this to all state and local school officials in North Carolina, and take steps to ensure compliance with Title IX. It also asks the federal government to request that the State Board of Education and the Department of Public Instruction to appoint liaisons to oversee and coordinate statewide compliance with Title IX and for both agencies to implement the DOE’s recommendations ona how to support gender-nonconforming students.

“When SB 49 passed we imagined all of the ways that students, parents, educators, and the North Carolina school system at large would be damaged,” Craig White, supportive schools director for the Campaign for Southern Equality, said in the press release. “This complaint shows that those harms are actually happening right now in schools across North Carolina — endangering and marginalizing LGBTQ+ students and students from LGBTQ+ families. The state’s public education system is now clouded by fear, discrimination, and censorship that interferes with students’ ability to learn. It is time for school districts to stop implementing SB 49 — because the anti-LGBTQ+ policies that this law requires are patently incompatible with the Title IX protections to which every LGBTQ+ student is entitled.”

There has been other pushback against the law as well. The Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School Board in North Carolina recently voted unanimously that it would not require school staff to notify parents if a student’s name or pronouns change, and it would not ban instruction about gender identity before fifth grade, going against SB 49’s mandate. And the Campaign for Southern Equality Youth OUTright, and PFLAG Asheville filed a complaint in December with the Title IX coordinator for Buncombe County, N.C., schools alleging the school board violated Title IX by implementing the law.