Virginia’s Fairfax County School Board amended its student code of conduct to give schools more power to punish students who “misgender” or “deadname” students who identify as transgender.
Students who violate the new policy could be punished with suspension and referrals to local law enforcement.
In an 8-4 decision, the board changed the Students Rights and Responsibilities to include “discriminatory harassment” on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation as “behaviors of safety concern.”
The school district has had a similar policy for over a year, but this change will allow administrators to punish students under Title IX protections. Such a rule preempts an expected Title IX rule change from that Biden administration that is set to expand the definition of discrimination on the basis of sex to include gender identity — something Breitbart News reported 63 percent of Americans disagree with.
Parents rallied outside the school board meeting in opposition to the policy change.
WATCH: Fairfax County parents rallied yesterday before the school board’s vote on whether the district will expand a policy that says students may be suspended for what FCPS calls “malicious misgendering.”
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“There’s an overreach happening with the school board with these policies because this isn’t coming in an organic fashion from the parents,” Fairfax County mother of six Stacy Langton told the Epoch Times. “If there’s no demand for it, then that means [school board members] are deliberately pushing a particular agenda. So I’m very bothered by that.”
Langton contended that the rule amounts to “indoctrinating the kids into a place where it all seems normal and desensitizing them to any kind of normal reaction, which would be revulsion, or to acknowledge that, hey, that’s not normal to call a boy a girl or a girl a boy.”
Former adviser to former President Donald Trump Dr. Sebastian Gorka also attended the rally in opposition to the rule change, calling it “communist.”
“Controlling language is wrong for adults; it’s especially wrong for children,” he told the Epoch Times. “This should be about education. It should be about bettering the minds of children, not punishing them because there is some language that administrators prefer.”
Gorka believes the gender ideology being pushed in America’s schools is part of an “agenda to dismantle Western civilization by driving a wedge between children and their parents and blindsiding parents from their children’s gender transition,” according to the Times.
There was also a counter rally of parents who support the rule change, some of whom argue that misgendering is tantamount to using racial slurs.
Breccan F. Thies is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @BreccanFThies.