Florida teacher fired for using gender-neutral honorific ‘Mx.’
Florida teacher fired for using gender-neutral honorific ‘Mx.’
The teacher has filed a discrimination complaint alleging that their termination is a violation of federal civil rights law.
I am glad someone is calling the Florida school system on their bullshit. Being non-binary hard and being treated like the coping mechanisms you use for avoiding hating the experience of dealing with people and existing in your body are somehow a delusion, some sort of sexual kink or deliberately confusing is like trying to go about your day with weights strapped to you. It makes dealing with every social interaction so tiring. It really feels like everybody else in the room is obsessed with your sex organs and characteristics like complete perverts that they don't see the question is about how happy you are and how you feel about all the people in your life and whether you feel anxious and isolated being around them or just comfortable and able to express your full range of personhood.
This teacher is standing up because they know there's others much worse off who aren't secure enough to do it. Pretty admirable I think.
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Title VII of the Civil Rights Act explicitly prohibits discrimination because of sex in matters of employment. Florida is free to prevent teachers from teaching things, but they cannot fire people for their own sexual identity, per federal law.
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Meanwhile, Title II of CRA covers interstate commerce and prohibits discrimination because of race, color, religion, or national origin - but not sex. Under Federal Law, if your business has a lot of out of state customers (primarily hospitality) or includes supply chains that cross state lines, you can't discriminate on race, etc but you can discriminate on sex.
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The 14th Amendment states that the law must apply to everyone equally. However, this only applies to governments (and their contractors) - a black person cannot be refused to be heard in court and a gay person cannot be refused a marriage.
The way US law is supposed to work is that states can set their own laws where Federal Law doesn't cover it. However, they must do this within the bounds of Federal Law. This is why we have 1st Amendment challenges against state laws that fill in the gaps of federal law - a business can discriminate based on sex, or any other reason (so long as they don't fall under Title II), even if state law says otherwise.
US law is so shit. It's unnecessarily hard to read, distributed across multiple yet interwoven jurisdictions, and full of holes. But hey, at least it isn't financial regulations - reading those will cause a sane person to lose the will to live.
TL;DR This should be a slam dunk for the teacher, per Federal Law: Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which overrules anything the states write. However, who knows how the current Supreme Court might try to spin it - if they even opt to hear it (they absolutely should).
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First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.We call people what they want to be called. (Credit for this to Charlie Worroll from Crimelines and other podcasts)
Repression has historically always won... right? !
Thank you for giving your insight on this. For a long time I had a hard time grasping what non-binary meant and it took some NB friends of mine explaining it to me for get it finally (not that I needed that understanding to accept them, but I truly wanted to understand what being NB meant) and I think people sharing how these horrible policies affect them opens the door for understanding.