JUL 1, 5:12 PM

Loudoun County Teacher’s Case Over Comments On Trans Students Might End Up In Virginia Supreme Court

Jenny Gathright https://twitter.com/jennygathright

The legal battle over a Loudoun County teacher’s stance on how to refer to transgender students is continuing, with the opposing sides now arguing over whether the Virginia Supreme Court should take up the matter or not.

Attorneys for the teacher, Byron Tanner Cross, asked the court on Wednesday to reject an appeal from Loudoun County Public Schools, which is fighting a lower court’s decision mandating that Cross be reinstated after he was suspended for declaring he would not refer to transgender students by their correct pronouns. ... WTOP was first to report this latest development in the case.

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In Loudoun County, the debate over the rights of transgender students has also intensified since the school system’s June 11 statement. Last week, a particularly chaotic school board meeting ended in an arrest and the declaration of an unlawful assembly. Members of the public sparred with the board over the same transgender student rights policy that Cross had opposed.

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Longtime LGBTQ+ advocate Robert Norris Rigby, who teaches in Fairfax County Public Schools, told the Washington Post that other LGBTQ people in Northern Virginia were “shocked by how violent the mob was” at the meeting. ... “It does feel like Loudoun is unsafe,” Norris Rigby told the outlet. “It makes people elsewhere worry about whether this is coming for us.”

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