Pittsburgh-Area School District Considers New Pronoun, Athletics Policies for Trans Students

School board officials in a Pittsburgh metropolitan area are considering a series of policies would regulate transgender students’ identification, participation in athletics and restroom access.

The South Side School District's board last week proposed three policies pertaining to gender identity, as reported byCrisis in the Classroom, the brand name for Sinclair Broadcast Group’s national K-12 education reporting franchise.

The Beaver County Times reported that one of the proposals — titled “sex-based distinctions in athletics" — would effectively bar some transgender student-athletes from joining sports teams consistent with their gender identity. Participation in designated “boys” or “girls” sports would be based on students’ sex assigned at birth, rather than “irrelevant classifications” like race, religion and gender identity, according to the policy.

“Separate athletic teams based on sex preserve fairness, provide increased opportunity for girls and are safer,” the policy reads, citing “preserved sex-based distinctions for interscholastic athletics” under Title IX.

The district would provide "reasonable accommodations” for girls to play on boys’ teams in certain circumstances, according to the policy, as reported by the Times. Boys aiming to play on girls’ teams would need to meet several conditions, including providing a doctor’s note to the school’s athletic director “certifying the student has not started male puberty.”

Another policy, titled “student records,” would permit students and personnel to refuse to address a transgender or nonbinary student by their preferred name or pronoun if doing so would “violate the conscience” of the speaker. The rule would also prohibit staff from “referring to a student by names or pronouns inconsistent with the student's (sex assigned at birth)” without obtaining written permission from a parent or legal guardian.

Parents of transgender students would have to confirm their child’s gender identity by submitting a written accommodation request “specifically naming the gender identity and stating how the student has consistently, persistently, and insistently expressed the named identity, and including any other relevant information.” They could also be asked to provide “signed statements from the student's personal physician therapist, or licensed counselor verifying that the student has been diagnosed with gender dysphoria,” during this process.

School personnel should “endeavor to avoid addressing the student by the unwanted first name or pronoun” if these requisites are met, according to the policy, but staff could still refuse to address a transgender student by their preferred name or pronoun “as a matter of conscience.” In these cases, the district would recommend staff “avoid addressing the student by the unwanted first name and pronoun” and replace it with a more “neutral” moniker such as a last name, according to the Times report.

The policy would also prohibit district staff from using trans students’ preferred pronouns without written parental authorization, and bar personnel from concealing “material information about a student's mental, emotional, or physical health from the student's parent/guardian, including information related to gender identification.”

A third policy, “sex-based distinctions in multi-user privacy facilities,” asserts students must use multi-user facilities, such as locker rooms and restrooms, according to their sex assigned at birth regardless of gender identity.

The South Side Area School District has been involved in ideological clashes over LGBTQ+ protections, parental rights and free speech for more than a year, the Beaver Times reported. The school board in January assembled an ad hoc “pronoun committee” after scrapping district guidelines directing staff to address transgender and nonbinary students by pronouns aligning with their gender identity.

The directive was rescinded to reinstate high school teacher Daren Cusato, who was briefly placed on administrative leave last year for refusing to recognize students’ preferred pronouns, citing his conservative Christian values and First Amendment right to refuse speech, according to the report.

The public school-appointed pronoun committee garnered statewide attention for hearing “biblical perspectives” on gender identity at a mid-March meeting. It was dissolved in May.

Meanwhile, a group of South Side Area parents, teachers, alumni and LGBTQ+ allies publicly objected what they said were efforts by right-wing conservatives to advance anti-trans policies under the guise of parental rights. They argued policies compelling teachers to out LGBTQ+ students to families without consent threaten the privacy, mental health and physical safety of already vulnerable students.

They criticized members of Beaver County’s Moms For Liberty chapter and Harrisburg-based Independence Law Center, a conservative law firm and legal arm of the Pennsylvania Family Institute known for helping school districts craft policies considered discriminatory and legally perilous by LGBTQ+ advocates.

The Beaver Times reported that Independence Law Center senior counsel Jeremy Samek said Thursday the firm continues to advise South Side Area on legal and policy matters alongside the district's solicitor. The firm, he said, drafted the policies introduced last week.

“These policies provide reasonable accommodations to benefit all students while still protecting the purpose for which women’s sports and separate multi-user privacy facilities exist," Samek said in a statement. 

Attorney Kristina Moon with Pennsylvania’s Education Law Center earlier this year wrote a public letter to the board asserting that any policy permitting the misgendering and deadnaming of students violates Title IX and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act.

THe Beaver Times reported that attorneys with Weiss Burkardt Kramer, South Side’s current attorney representation, are reviewing the policies and intend to “thoroughly discuss and review them with the board after the holiday season,” said Danielle Guarascio with the firm.

Weiss Burkardt Kramer has previously recommended schools adhere to guidance issued by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights and Title IX.