Appeals court sides with parent group in fight over Ohio school district’s pronoun policy

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A divided federal appeals court in Ohio ruled against the state’s fourth largest school district on Thursday in a case that pitted its gender pronoun policies against the rights of students who believe there are only two genders.

The full Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the suburban Olentangy Local School District cannot prohibit students from using gender-related language deemed offensive, siding with Parents Defending Education, which had argued the policies were unconstitutional.

The national membership organization first filed suit against Olentangy in 2023, saying the district’s policies requiring the use of peers’ “preferred pronouns” were a violation of students’ rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The district argued the rules were aimed to prevent bullying and discrimination.

The lawsuit had captured broad national attention, with a number of conservative policy groups, the American Civil Liberties Union and Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Hindu rights organizations lining up against the policy and leading LGBTQ+ rights and schools groups lining up generally in defense of it.

The court found the district “has fallen far short” of meeting the standard that allowing such speech would “materially and substantially disrupt” school activities or infringe the legal “rights of others” in the school community.

“Our society continues to debate whether biological pronouns are appropriate or offensive — just as it continues to debate many other issues surrounding transgender rights,” Circuit Judge Eric Murphy wrote for the majority. “The school district may not skew this debate by forcing one side to change the way it conveys its message or by compelling it to express a different view.”

Circuit Judge Jane Stranch retorted in a dissent written entirely without the use of gendered, third-person pronouns for individuals.

While “it may be a new phenomenon for many to use new pronouns or to avoid using pronouns, it is certainly possible,” Stranch wrote, “social mores around pronouns have shifted over the course of American history, and these shifting mores have not suddenly rendered people unable to speak.”

It is not clear how far-reaching the impacts of the ruling might be. One Ohio teachers’ union had told the court that Olentangy’s policies are substantially similar to those used by districts around the state.

A three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit had found against the organization in July 2024, ruling that the school district had sufficiently shown that the speech it sought to prohibit would disrupt classroom instruction. That earlier decision also held that those policies did not compel students and families represented by the parents’ group to use any certain pronouns to address LGBTQ+ students nor suppress alternative viewpoints.

Thursday’s ruling reversed that decision and sent the case back to U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley in Columbus to issue a preliminary injunction against Olentangy enforcing the pronoun policies, which he did.

At issue in the case were overlapping district policies that prohibited the use of gender-related language that other students might deem insulting, dehumanizing, unwanted or offensive and call for the use of peers’ “preferred pronouns.”

The district’s electronic devices policy — which applies both on and off school time — prohibits transmitting “disruptive” material or material that could be seen as harassing or disparaging other students based on their gender identity or sexual orientation, among other categories.

A separate antidiscrimination policy prohibits students from saying or writing “discriminatory language” when they’re under the school’s authority. The policy bans derogatory comments, jokes or slurs based on a range of factors, including gender identity.

Marbley’s order did not prevent the district from continuing to enforce its antidiscrimination policy.

The district’s code of conduct echoes many of the same themes a third time.