Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals hands Parents Defending Education a defeat in a case similar to PDE’s lawsuit against the Croton-Harmon district. Use/misuse of pronouns is a major issue in the case.

In a 2-1 ruling involving an Ohio school district, the court declined to give PDE a preliminary injunction against policies designed to prevent harassment of transgender students.

Circuit court judge Jane B. Stranch/ Wikimedia Commons

As most readers will know, this June the conservative organization Parents Defending Education filed suit against the Croton-Harmon school district in an effort to block enforcement of all of the district’s anti-harassment, anti-bullying, anti-racist, and DEI policies. Earlier this month, U.S. district judge Cathy Seibel dismissed the case on the grounds that PDE did not have legal “standing” to file it in the first place, mainly because it relied on anonymous parents as plaintiffs. PDE is now appealing that decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, our local federal appellate court.

PDE has filed a number of similar cases against school districts across the country. Earlier this week, in a case involving the Olentangy Local School District in Ohio, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled against PDE, denying the organization’s motion for a preliminary injunction against the district’s anti-harassment policies—especially those which would require students to use the preferred pronouns of transgender and other students.

PDE, along with a number of other organizations that have joined in on the case, argued that compelling students to use these preferred pronouns violates their First Amendment rights to express contrary views, for example that gender is determined by biological sexual identity and is not mutable.