A 14-year-old high school student has been suspended from her Vermont school and her father, the coach of the girls soccer team, was fired without pay after the duo complained about biological males being allowed into the girls’ locker room — and now, the father-daughter duo is suing the school district, alleging they are being punished for expressing their discomfort.
(Video: Fox News)
Blake Allen made headlines recently after officials at Randolph Union High School (RUHS) banned the entire girls volleyball team from using its own locker room because they dared to voice their discomfort with a transgender student — a biological male — who was allegedly making inappropriate comments as the young women were changing.
Rather than acknowledge how uncomfortable the Vermont Agency of Education (AOE) policy allowing trans students to use whatever private spaces make them happy is for actual girls, an investigation into whether or not the trans student was harassed was opened.
Blake bravely spoke out against the investigation.
Vermont HS bans girl’s volleyball team from own locker room over dispute with trans teammate https://t.co/hO0tNedz4B
— American Wire News (@americanwire_) October 2, 2022
“I feel like for stating my opinion–that I don’t want a biological man changing with me–that I should not have harassment charges or bullying charges,” she told local news station WCAX earlier this month. “They should all be dropped.”
Needless to say, the school didn’t drop the investigation. Instead, they doubled down on trans rights and not only suspended her, they fired her dad.
“I was in the locker room and the trans student walked in, and there was the rest of the team was in there,” Blake explained on Thursday to Fox News’s Tucker Carlson. “I was really uncomfortable and I left, and I told the school and they just shut me down and said there was nothing they could do.”
“I was later suspended because I voiced my opinion that a man shouldn’t be in the women’s locker room,” she stated. “Then, when we filed a lawsuit, they dropped the suspension.”
“I think they were mad that I was telling people how I thought it was wrong and that men shouldn’t be allowed to be with us in the locker room,” she said.
Blake said that her fellow students have supported her stand against allowing the trans student into the locker room, but most are “too scared to speak up.”
“A lot of my classmates were supportive,” she said. “I think most people and the school are, they are just too scared to speak up because they see all the backlash I’m getting for it.”
Blake explained that the school wanted her to do a “restorative justice circle” and “write a letter of apology” to the trans student — something the freshman said she wasn’t about to do.
“I said I would rather have a five-day suspension than have to apologize because I’m not sorry,” she stated.
That backlash spilled over to her father, who soon found himself without a job.
“I made a social media post that referred to the male student as a male, and I was punished because of it. Because I misgendered him,” Travis Allen said
According to Allen, staffers at the school have been less supportive than the students.
When asked if anyone protested the suspension, he stated, “None of the other school members did. Other community members have privately.”
The lawsuit, obtained by The Daily Signal, names Superintendent Layne Millington, co-principals Lisa Floyd and Caty Sutton, and the Orange Southwest School District Board, and alleges that “In objecting to a male being in the room while the girls are changing, Travis and Blake each made comments underscoring that the trans-identifying student is in fact a male, including by using male pronouns.”
“Indeed, their view of the student’s maleness was foundational to their opinions on appropriate use of the locker room,” the filing continues. “Yet, their remarks were too much for Defendants’ transgender orthodoxy—Travis was deemed to have ‘misgendered’ the student, while Blake was found guilty of ‘harassment’ and ‘bullying’—so Defendants disciplined both of them.”
The Allens’ attorneys, from the Alliance Defending Freedom, argued that, as state actors, the co-defendants violated “the First Amendment” by trying to dictate “what may be said on matters of public concern.”
School officials are not allowed to discriminate against speech because it doesn’t suit their viewpoint, the lawsuit claims.
“Yet, that is exactly what happened here,” it states. “Defendants punished Travis and Blake for saying that a male is a male, as a matter of sex and biology, regardless of the gender identity that the male has assumed.”
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Melissa Fine is the former executive editor of Casino Player, Strictly Slots, and Poker
Digest magazines. She is a UCLA graduate, news junkie, and dedicated Stargate SG-
1 fan. Melissa currently lives with her dog and two cats in a tiny town in the Sierra
Nevada foothills.
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