“The two then had a contentious exchange of texts on the issue,” the lawsuit said, which took place “outside of school hours and off school grounds.”
The texts were given to the school administration and resulted in M.P.’s suspension, the suit says.
Exeter Superintendent David Ryan said that he was aware of the lawsuit, which seeks nominal damages and an injunction prohibiting the school district from applying the policy “to penalize, through athletic suspension or other means, mere expression of the belief that there are only two genders.”
“We are in the process of reviewing this complaint with legal counsel and will be able to share a statement once we have completed that review,” Ryan said.
The lawsuit argues that the school district policy and the chain of events leading to the suspension are not neutral towards religion.
“Instead, they compel M. P. to deny the historic tenets of his faith by affirming non-binary gender identities and/or using ideologically loaded terms such as the singular pronoun ‘they,’ it said.
“Defendants’ policies and actions disfavor the expression of beliefs held by tens of millions of believing Catholics in the United States, as well as by countless other traditional Christians, Muslims, and Orthodox Jews.”
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