Va. teacher suspended over anti-trans comments files lawsuit

Anti-LGBTQ Alliance Defending Freedom represents Tanner Cross

Published 10 hours ago on June 5, 2021 By Staff reports

A Loudoun County teacher who has been suspended over his comments against transgender students has filed a lawsuit. ... The anti-LGBTQ Alliance Defending Freedom on June 1 filed a lawsuit in Loudoun County Circuit Court on behalf of Tanner Cross.

Cross, a physical education teacher at Leesburg Elementary School, during a May 25 school board meeting said he would not use a student’s preferred pronouns to refer to them. The school board is considering a pronoun policy in response to a Virginia Department of Education directive to school districts to make their policies more trans-friendly.

“This case is not about how schools should treat students who struggle with gender dysphoria,” reads the lawsuit. “It is about whether public schools can punish a teacher for objecting, as a private citizen, to a proposed policy, in a forum designated for the purpose of considering whether to implement such policies, where the policy would force him to express ideas about human nature, unrelated to the school’s curriculum, that he believes are false.”

The lawsuit names the Loudoun County School Board, Interim Superintendent Scott Ziegler and Interim Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources and Talent Development Lucia Villa Sebastian as defendants.

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