A FreeState Justice has filed a lawsuit in Federal court against Talbot County on behalf of a 14-year-old Maryland transgender boy accusing an Eastern Shore school system of violating Title IX by denying him access to locker rooms consistent with his gender identity.

The boy, who was not identified in the lawsuit, will be a ninth grader at St. Michaels Middle-High School, and wants to try out for soccer in August, according to Jer Welter, FreeState Justice's deputy director and managing attorney.

During last school year, the boy used a gender neutral restroom far from the gym and his classrooms.

This has been a problem. It is stigmatizing for him. It marks him as different from the other students.

--Welter

It would also prevent him from actually being part of the team.

In other ways, the school has been accommodating, Welter said. During seventh grade, as he transitioned, the school used the correct pronoun to refer to him, and allowed him to use his chosen name. Students at the school have been generally supportive as well, he said.

After the Fourth Circuit ruling in the Grimm case, the school allowed the student to the boys restroom, but the school claims the ruling did not apply to locker rooms.

The Florida Department of Health has asked a judge to determine whether a state law allowing it to change the gender on birth certificates applies to a transgender teenager in Broward County.

This particular request presents an unprecedented issue for the department.

--DOH lawyer Nichole Geary

The parents of the unnamed 14-year-old asked a Broward court earlier this year to allow the name and birth certificate change for their transgender son. The child’s birth certificate identifies him as female, but his parents say the youth identifies himself as male and wishes to live his life with a male name and male characteristics.

A Broward judge ordered the name change and added a handwritten note ordering the agency “to change the gender identifier for the child,” Geary said in the petition. The judge also sealed the record.

But rather than issue a new birth certificate, the Department of Health, which oversees Vital Statistics, instead now wants the court to decide whether the agency has the authority under the name-change proceeding to also revise the birth certificate.

State law allows the department to change the gender on a birth certificate if there is documentary evidence of “any misstatement, error or omission.”

The agency believes that it cannot revise the teen’s birth certificate because “there is no process in place to change the gender on a birth certificate for a minor in the state of Florida that is not a misstatement, error or omission occurring at birth.

--Mara Gambineri, DOH

The child's parents have threatened legal action against DOH if it fails to comply with the request.

Circuit Court Judge Karen Gievers ordered the agency to re-file the request using a generic name for the boy and his parents so that the record could be open to the public.

Gievers also appointed Miami lawyer Richard Milstein to serve as the child’s guardian ad litem during the proceedings and “to address the best interests of the child regarding the confidentiality issue.” John Rosenquest, attorney for the family, told Gievers that the parents “have spoken with their child” and want the case and the hearing “not shielded from the Sunshine laws or a public record.”

Ash Whitaker and his mother filed a lawsuit in US District Court in Milwaukee against Kenosha Unified School District and Superintendent Sue Savaglio-Jarvis and others "who have repeatedly refused to recognize or respect (Whitaker's) gender identity and have taken a series of discriminatory and highly stigmatizing actions against him."

Whitaker, 16, is a transgender boy.

The lawsuit says district officials among other things denied him access to the boys' restrooms, intentionally and repeatedly used his birth name and female pronouns to identify him; instructed guidance counselors to issue bright green wristbands to Whitaker and any other transgender students to more easily monitor their bathroom use; and required him to room with girls on overnight school trips.

This past spring, the school district refused to allow Ash to run for prom king before eventually reversing it stance.

In 2015 school administrators at George Nelson Tremper High School denied the Whitakers’ request to allow Ash to use the boys’ bathroom, instructing him to either use the girls’ room or a single-occupant restroom in the school office instead.

Ash claims that the office bathroom was “far out of the way from most of his classes” and that he didn’t want to use it anyway because “he would be segregated from his classmates and further stigmatized for being ‘different.’” According to the complaint, this left Ash feeling “overwhelmed, helpless, hopeless, and alone.”

A February 2016 study in the The Journal of Homosexuality analyzed data from the Transgender Discrimination Survey and found that restricting transgender college students access to restrooms or campus housing “had a significant relationship to [their] suicidality, even after controlling for interpersonal victimization.”

The Whitakers claim that Ash then “largely avoided using any restrooms at school for the rest of that school year” and even “restricted his liquid intake,” which worsened his migraines and his symptoms of vasovagal syncope, a fainting condition.

Nearly a third of the over 27,000 total respondents to the US Transgender Survey have avoided drinking or eating to stay out of bathrooms in the last year. Eight percent have suffered a UTI or another kidney-related medical issue as a result.

Ash’s guidance counselor introduced the troubling “bright green wristband practice” for transgender students. The Whitakers believe this policy was aimed directly at Ash but they were allegedly told that it would apply to “any other transgender students at the school” as well.

[Ash] felt like his safety would be even more threatened if he had to wear this visible badge of his transgender status.

--The lawsuit

These lawsuits are about the equal treatment of transgender students and making sure they are treated just like every other student in their schools.

--Alison Pennington, Transgender Law Center