Student files lawsuit after being suspended for saying there are only two genders

Once tasked with teaching young people the scientific and historical and even moral truths of life, public schools are now punishing them for saying that the vast majority of human beings are one of two genders.

A New Hampshire teenager who asserted this fact on a school bus, and then in a text-message exchange, was allegedly suspended from athletics and is now is suing his school district.

According to the suit, the Exeter High School freshman was given a one-game football suspension in September based on a text conversation he had with another student that didn’t even happen on school property.

Filed Nov. 4 through Cornerstone Action, a Christian organization, the suit asserts that the student stated the Catholic belief that there are only two genders, reports the Portsmouth Herald. The lawsuit also declares that Exeter’s policy on “non-binary gender identity” and pronouns violates his First Amendment rights to speak freely as he sees fit.

The school’s policy reportedly does control the free speech of students, saying that students have the “right” to be addressed by names and pronouns of their own choosing regardless of their physically evident gender. The policy also states that those who don’t accept and indulge the gender ideas of others – or their preferred pronouns – are in violation of the policy.

According to coverage by the Herald, the lawsuit says the student doesn’t deny he violated the policy. “He in fact denied, and will continue to deny, that any person can belong to a gender other than that of ‘male’ or ‘female’” it says. The student, it continues, “will never refer to any individual person using plural pronouns such as ‘they,’ using contrived pronouns such as ‘ze,’ or with any similar terminology that reflects values which (the student) does not share.”

The suspension followed an exchange on the bus with friends over using plural pronouns in Spanish, which uses masculine and feminine plurals, according to the suit.

A female student who overheard the discussion allegedly told the student there were more than two genders, which led to a “contentious” text exchange. That conversation was printed out and shown to him by school administrators when he was suspended, the Herald reported.

School Superintendent David Ryan said the school was reviewing the complaint “and will be able to share a statement once we have completed that review.”

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