A West Virginia school board “punished” a group of middle school girls who protested biological males competing against them in a track meet earlier this month, according to law enforcement officials. complaint.
What is your background?
Cellphone video showed Lincoln Middle School girls protesting in the shot put ring at the Harrison County Middle School Championships on April 18. One by one, they stepped into the ring and immediately left without making any attempts.
A video posted by female athlete advocate Riley Gaines appears to show six separate protests by Lincoln University women’s athletes in the shot put ring, Athletic.net reported.
shown Five female students from Lincoln University reportedly recorded an ND (no distance) in the final. Gaines also wrote that five girls refused to participate.
Blaze News reports that just days before the tournament, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that West Virginia’s law requiring all student-athletes to participate according to their biological sex is subject to the title of Becky Pepper Jackson. It was reported that the court ruled that it infringed on the rights of IX. —The students the girls protested against.
Pepper Jackson, who is biologically male, has lived as a woman and taken puberty blockers for years. Pepper Jackson of Bridgeport told The Athletic.
won the shot put final In the tournament, he tossed 32 feet, 9 inches, easily beating the second-place finisher by more than three feet.
What happened next?
The parents of four of the five girls who protested filed legal complaints against the Harrison County Board of Education.
According to the complaint, the girls attended a press conference on April 24 announcing their protest. Those in attendance included Gaines, state Attorney General Patrick Morrissey, Comptroller JB McCaskey and several Republican members of the state Senate and House of Delegates, according to the complaint.
The complaint also states that the following Thursday, the father of one of the girls “spoke with Lincoln Middle School Principal Lori Scott” and that the girls who protested “will not be allowed to compete in their scheduled track and field events. He also said that he was told: See you on April 27, 2024. ”
The complaint also states that the father of another girl spoke with coach Dawn Riestenberg and was “informed that his daughter would not be able to participate in the track and field meet scheduled for April 27.” The complaint adds that Liestenberg told her father that the girls were excluded from the competition because it was her job to “score points for the track and field team,” the complaint says. It said this was related to “the protest by underage student athletes and their subsequent attendance at a press conference.” A meeting is held to decide on banning them from the competition. ”
The complaint states that the protesting girls are being “punished” by the school board “for exercising their right to free speech and expression under the West Virginia Constitution.”
The suit, filed Friday, the day before the April 27 tournament the girls were allegedly barred from participating in, does not seek monetary damages, but only “injunctive relief.”State Attorney General Morrissey It has been submitted Friday’s court brief supporting the parents’ lawsuit.
“The only thing this decision does is teach our children to keep their mouths shut and not to speak out against what they perceive to be an injustice,” Morrisey said in a news release. WBOY-TV. “It is outrageous and tramples on students’ rights to freedom of speech and expression.”
Apparently, not only the complaint but even the support from the state attorney general was not enough.
None of the Lincoln Middle School girls named in the complaint participated in the shot put competition at the 2016 Mid-Mountain 10 Championships, according to Athletic.net records. April 27th.
Additionally, the girls named in the complaint are all listed on the shot put report card, although the girls who protested were reportedly banned from competition for long periods of time. Monday A collection of invitations.
The school board on Tuesday did not immediately respond to Blaze News’ request for comment on the complaint.
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