Photo by Rebecca Gaunt: Katie Rinderle (back, far right) joined Maariya Sheikh and other members of the Georgia Youth Justice Coalition at their June press conference to announce they were joining the lawsuit
By Rebecca Gaunt
The U.S. Department of Justice joined 14 states last week to file in support of fired teacher Katie Rinderle’s discrimination lawsuit against Cobb County School District.
She is the first known case of a teacher being terminated after Georgia passed the divisive concepts and parental rights laws of 2022.
Rinderle was fired in August 2023 after she read the book “My Shadow is Purple” by Scott Stuart about a nonbinary child who has a shadow that is both pink and blue. Her appeal to the state board of education was unsuccessful.
The complaint describes how the district’s policies on “controversial issues” have been used to unlawfully discipline educators for mentioning LGBTQ and gender-nonconforming people and their experiences in the classroom, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The complaint also states that Rinderle’s termination is illegal retaliation in violation of Title IX – the civil rights law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in schools.
In July, the school district filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, calling it “an extraordinary encroachment into educational decisions historically left to school officials, not the students they teach or the teachers they employ” and a “run of the mill personnel matter.”
In the court documents, the states’ attorneys general contend that the responsibility for public education lies with the states and encompasses the duties to prepare students for active and effective participation in society and to protect them from harm, including LGBTQ students.
They allege that Cobb County School District took action “far outside the bounds of ordinary educational decision-making” that can potentially stigmatize and harm LGBTQ youth.
The DOJ did not take a stand on the merits of Rinderle’s allegations, but did encourage the evaluation of whether the district’s policies are violations of Title IX.
The states asking the court not to dismiss the lawsuit include California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, and Vermont.
Special education teacher Tonya Grimmke, a transgender Cobb County student, and the Georgia Youth Justice Coalition are also plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the school district.
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