Two lawsuits say Brewer High School students should be allowed to petition the school to reverse its transgender bathroom policy.
One suit, filed on Wednesday, comes from a Brewer High School student and her father who claim the student’s rights were violated when school officials told her a petition she and a classmate circulated could be considered hate speech. The petition sought to reverse the school’s policy that gives transgender students permission to use the bathroom and locker room that corresponds with their gender identity.
The two students named in the court filing are identified only by their initials, H.W. and C.G.
The other, filed on Feb. 22, comes from Shawn McBreairty, a far right activist and mirrors the lawsuit from the Brewer student. McBreairty has a lengthy history of speaking in local school board meetings and has accused multiple Maine school districts, state agencies, teachers and others of indoctrinating students and teaching critical race theory.
Both lawsuits were filed by the Randazza Legal Group in the U.S. District Court in Bangor and are against the Brewer School Department Superintendent Gregg Palmer, Brewer High School Principal Brent Slowikowski and Michelle MacDonald, an English teacher at the school.
The Randazza Legal Group is a Nevada-based firm that specializes in First Amendment law.
According to the lawsuits, the two Brewer High School students “support full civil rights, civil liberties, and equal treatment for all persons.” However, they believe students should be required to use the bathroom and locker room that corresponds to their biological sex because, “some people take advantage of openness in the form of permissive bathroom policies in order to sexually assault girls.”
The suit alleges that another student, identified as H.D., is biologically male and has been using the women’s restroom, but “has a reported history of sexual assault at Brewer High School.”
The complaint also claims the defendants met with the two students and ordered them to stop circulating their petition, which had been signed by “many” students, because it was “hate speech” and “like ‘supporting racial segregation.’”
From that meeting, the students claim to believe “they would be prosecuted, criminally, for a ‘hate crime’ or sued by the school, and disciplined by the school if they continued to circulate the petition,” according to the court filing.
The lawsuit argues the students still have the First Amendment right to petition in school.
Palmer declined to comment on the lawsuits on Friday.
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled in 2014 that transgender students can use the bathroom that matches the gender they identify with.
Larry Lockman, an anti-LGBTQ+ activist and former state representative, also took aim at the Brewer school’s policy in early February when he hosted a community forum in Brewer to rally parents opposed to the rule, according to the Maine Beacon, the media site of the liberal Maine People’s Alliance.
The lawsuits come on the heels of Gardiner students defending the district’s transgender student policy last month after several school board members received complaints from parents, according to the Kennebec Journal. The policy requires school staff to use a person’s preferred name and pronouns and allows transgender and nonbinary students to use whatever bathroom or locker room best aligns with their gender identity, among other protections.
Gardiner students argued the policy helps transgender and nonbinary students feel welcome at school and safe to be themselves.