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 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.
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.
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 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 Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled in 2014 that transgender students can use the bathroom that matches the gender they identify with.