Can a public school teacher call his/her students any name they wish? (actual court case)

Great Debates
121

This is just the exactly wrong way to go about it. When dealing with policies, you concern yourself with real world cases, and making sure that the policy works most of the time. You don’t put primary focus on the grey areas. Such will always exist.

That said, I your case isn’t all that hard. First you ask the kid to spell it, which would weed out those who didn’t think fast enough. If they spell it like a real name, you if they’re sure , because you will call them that for the rest of the year/semester/quarter. If they say yes, you call the kid Bodie. Maybe the class snickers. So what? A joke can only be funny for so long before people get tired of it, and kids get tired of it more quickly. And now the kid faces the consequences of their “joke,” being the one who gets made fun of for their “lame” name.

Furthermore, if you’re concerned about being sued, that makes it more obvious. The only suit that could possibly have merit would be a discrimination case against you. And that would only happen if you don’t use someone’s preferred name. Some kids snickering vs. you being sued: pretty easy answer.

I can’t agree that this is at all difficult. The vast majority of the time, it will be abundantly clear whether the name is legit or not. And, when you can’t, you err on the side of using the name they gave you.

(Of course, if there is a policy as in the OP, then it’s even easier, as the decision isn’t yours to make anyways, unless you want to quit. Use the name they gave, and then run it by whoever you’re supposed to discuss possible policy exceptions with.)

122

Probably not that different. I mean, it’s just barely possible that the government as an employer cannot require a teacher to use appropriate gender-linked pronouns such as “him” or “her” or titles such as Mr. or Ms. or require the teacher to call a student by a name other than their legal name - but that doesn’t mean the government as an employer can’t simultaneously forbid the teacher to misgender the student. There are ways to do both * , such as avoiding the use of pronouns altogether or using singular “they” or gender neutral neopronouns or referring to students by the last name only - but of course, that would have to go for all students. If the teacher uses “he” or “she” or the first name for 30 students and only uses “they” or just their last name for one or two, that would still be offensive.

Although I have to kind of wonder what this teacher would do if she encountered a biologically female student who identified as female but was legally named Frank - would she refuse to call her Frank because it’s a male name?

  • Mostly- a person whose pronouns are he/him/his might be offended by they/them/theirs or ey/em/eir but probably not as offended if everyone in the class is referred to using those pronouns and I’m certain those pronouns would be less offensive than she/her/hers.
123

Maybe. Or that the school policy prohibits any negative commentary on the hat, but her religion prohibits her from lying about how stupid the hat is. (Except, in this example, there does not appear to by any way acknowledging the issue).

I have trouble understanding your point. Obviously, the regulation of a person’s speech can implicate a person’s religious beliefs.

In your example, it wouldn’t be a difficult hypothetical or thought exercise to imagine a sincerely held religious belief that prohibited an member from referring to anyone other than their deity as “The Honorable” and that, therefore, your example of a mandated form of address may need religious accommodation.

124

My school’s record system has fields, not just for the “official name”, but also for a “use name”, which is what the student (or their parents) prefers to go by. And it’s not too difficult to get that changed. Unfortunately, the system we use most doesn’t make that “use name” very obvious: You have to go in to each student’s record to see it, rather than it showing in the full roster list, or the like. But I’ve seen other systems where the roster shows the official name, followed by the preferred name in parentheses. That made things a lot easier for me, back when I was subbing and had to take attendance from a roster.

OK, that would justify an intolerance of gender fluidity, but none of that in any way conflicts with transsexuality. A transman would argue that he was male from the moment of conception, and that he can’t change that, even if he was born with female genitalia.

I don’t know. It’s certainly possible that at least some of them are going by “they” just out of solidarity. Some of them happen to be very empathetic, and do frequently take steps to ease perceived problems for others. It’s also possible, of course, that the standard figures for the percentage of trans people are underestimates, and that the younger generation, surrounded by supporting peers, are more likely to “come out of the closet”.

But even if it is just a matter of solidarity, those are still all students who would be offended at being called by their assigned-at-birth pronouns. The possibility that they’re offended because they don’t want to hurt others, rather than on their own behalf, doesn’t diminish that. If anything, such selflessness makes the case even stronger.

Ultimately, it’s pretty simple: You have one single policy, that you apply equally for all students. And that single policy is, you call people what they ask to be called. And it even works for the (extremely rare) student who asks to be called “Boaty McBoatface”, because, in the likely event that it wasn’t serious and just meant to be disruptive, the student faces the natural consequence of continually getting called something that they don’t actually like.

125

Agree.

Disagree. An employer can set a reasonable standard for employee behavior and if those standards violate the employee’s sincerely held religious beliefs, then the employer should offer a reasonable accommodation or show that it would cause an undue hardship. That’s roughly the standard we expect of private employers (where the First Amendment does not apply at all).

The notion that an employer can set whatever “reasonable” standards it wants and a religiously-observant employee must compromise their beliefs or resign is largely inconsistent with the way that issue is treated in this country – whether it’s dress codes, or workdays, or work tasks, or other perfectly legitimate areas for an employer to have policies.

I think the school district prevails, here, because I don’t see how to accommodate the teacher without undermining the purpose of the policy.

But, I definitely disagree that part of the analysis is testing the theological or “scriptural” basis for her religious beliefs. That is not the business of a court.

126

You say that, but you also keep arguing that people shouldn’t care about things that affect a small enough percentage of the population. That’s what I object to, and vehemently so.

It’s one of those things that people say but I can’t see how they could even possibly mean it. A whole lot of things affect even less than 1 in 1000 people, but we still have to deal with it. And you went as high as 1 in 10 people in one of your posts (the 10% one.) I’m sure there are things that affect you that affect less than 300000 people in the US, but that you want others to care about. I know many disabilities that affect less than that number of people, but we still make accommodations for people who have them.

Plus, in this case we’re dealing with an issue related to bigotry here. And bigotry is caused by people only caring about the majority, allowing the minority to be harmed. The whole idea of fighting bigotry is to fight the tyranny of the majority.

Finally, there’s the fact that the standard here is not onerous at all. Calling people what they want to be called has been the standard for a long time. It being specifically for trans people has been accepted by the general population for at least a decade now. And there’s a reason why employers like yours or the school in question are making a big deal about it: to make sure ignorance can no longer be an excuse.

If you think this policy is valid and that the teacher is completely in the wrong, then why argue that teachers shouldn’t have to be concerned about things that only affect 0.6% of the population?

127

I’m not seeing this. Can you give examples of when employers enacted reasonable standards and where then told by the courts that religiously observant employees were exempt from those standards?

Actually I agree with you on this. I feel the issue of what evidence supports a person’s religious beliefs is a moot one in situations like this. That’s why I put that part of my post in parentheses; I intended it as an aside and not part of my main argument.

What I was commenting on with that aside was that many times in cases like this we see people who are actually trying to promote a conservative political ideology by pretending it’s a religious ideology. To me, this is an insult to genuine religious beliefs.

And I feel that’s the case here. In my opinion, Ms Ricard’s claim that her bigotry is justified by her religious beliefs isn’t just offensive to transgendered people. It’s also offensive to real Christians.

128

On one hand, I agree that the Court shouldn’t be going over scripture. That’s too much in the realm of dictating religion.

On the other, however, I’ve never understood how you can argue that X can be a valid exception without being able to test if X is actually legitimate. It would be like having a policy that you can get out of a gym class with a note from your parent, without being able to verify if the note was real.

There has to be some level of testing whether the religious belief is real, rather than just something the person made up to try and avoid having to follow whatever law or policy they don’t like. Just like we should be able to judge if the kid just made up the note to get out of gym class.

One idea I have is to see if they seem to actually follow this belief. That could catch a lot of people if they treat people with some sort of authority over them differently. Another could be to ask the leader of their stated religious group if they actually do teach what they said. If you’re going to claim a particular religion is the reason you can’t follow a particular policy, then at least the person you defer to about your religion should agree that it is against the religion.

It would be the difference between the court practicing medicine to see if a student was really sick and checking with the doctor to make sure that the sick note was real. Or checking if the student suddenly wasn’t suddenly completely well outside of the classroom or school.

129

I think that the way that rareness of a situation is relevant is that, if a situation is rare enough, then there will be many institutions where it won’t come up at all. To take a less-controversial example, suppose it’s an allergy we’re talking about. If a student at a school, or an employee of a company, is allergic to, say, potatoes, then the cafeteria should make sure to have some potato-free meal options available, and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to require that they do so as a matter of law. But potato allergies are pretty rare, so most schools won’t have any students allergic to potatoes, and won’t have to worry about that (and meanwhile, the school that does have a student allergic to potatoes probably doesn’t have to worry about any students with a rice allergy). In other words, rare situations can be handled on a case-by-case basis.

On the other hand, if the trans population is really 0.6% of the population, that’s still high enough that most high schools will, in fact, have one or more trans students, and so that’s an issue that’s relevant to almost all schools.

130

IIRC the in the Hobby Lobby case they opposed offering birth control pills to women because their religious beliefs were opposed to abortions.

Birth control pills are not an abortifacient. We know that for a fact. The supreme court didn’t care. Hobby Lobby believing it was sufficient.

131

Yeah in as much as any action or prohibition against it could be hypothetically construed to encroaching on someone’s right to religious Liberty. Up to and including my right to murder whoever I want when I want because I follow the death god Cthulhu. In practice I’ve no problem calling that ridiculous.

Unlike the question of whether a religious school can ban or mandate specific religious clothing. Which whether you agree or disagree is clearly a bit of an “edge case” on the 1st amendment that should be decided by a court.

132

It happens with dress codes and grooming standards with some frequency. An employer adopts a “reasonable standard” that prohibits headwear, or jewelry, or requires everyone to wear pants. And it’s challenged by a Sikh, or Muslim, or Orthodox Jew, or Pentecostal Christian (who must wear skirts). Or an employer requires hair a certain length or men to be clean-shaven or whatever. And you are challenged (again) by Muslims, Sikh, Nazerites, etc. An employer requires all employees to take a certain number of Saturday shifts, and a Seventh-Day Adventist objects… These all, typically, end in the employee being exempt from the policy.

These are less “important” standards than the one at issue here, but they are clearly within the conventional ability of an employer to regulate the workplace. As I recall, you worked in corrections – when the “clean shaven police officer” requirement was challenged in Newark, the police department argued that it had an interest in fostering a uniform appearance among its officers (and that it would help with public confidence and public safety). True or not, the Sunni Muslim officers that challenged it were held to be exempt (and it did not matter that it is not clear whether Muslim men are required to grow beards).

You can test the “sincerity” of the religious belief. (And a lot of the recent religious exemption claims call out for such a testing). The IRS does it from time to time; you see it with respect to religious use exemption requests for certain drugs with some frequency. In some cases, it’s easy (I recall a case about a brothel that claimed to be a temple).

But, with a lot of the drug stuff, it implicates the concerns I have – you look at established practices, affiliation with other similar groups, whether the congregation is insular or too open to outsiders. It’s a mess.

(The other problem, of course, is that religious accommodation is personal. It doesn’t matter that Seventh Day Adventists really do observe a Saturday sabbath when I demand the weekend off – I don’t observe it).

133

Way too simple.

And practical.

And respectful.

It would never work.

134

@Dinsdale As of 2014, the year I wrote my research paper, the estimated population of transgender people in the United States was 700,000. That’s approximately the population of Detroit, Michigan.

135

The last current estimate I saw was twice that.

136

It appears we have a disagreement on what is reasonable. In the cases you’re describing it appears an employer was just indulging a personal preference. It doesn’t appear that there was any job-related reason why employees had to be clean shaven or wear pants or not wear head coverings. So the court was right to find people’s constitutional rights outweighed what was essentially an individual’s preference.

Telling a teacher they must treat all of their students with the same respect and not harass students from groups they personally dislike is a valid standard for a school to enact in its goal of educating students. So in this case, the individual’s preference (a refusal to acknowledge transgender students) is outweighed by a genuine and legitimate need, even if that preference is based on the teacher’s religious beliefs.

137

I agree. Policies like this aren’t needed for most people who will act professionally at work just because they are good employees. These policies are needed to control the small handful of employees who would act inappropriately if somebody wasn’t telling them they can’t.

138

Yes, Falchion specifically said above that he thought the teacher should lose this case, precisely because unlike the cases about dress codes, there is a real and significant job-related reason why the rule exists.

139

Teacher on the first day of class is doing just that. “What’s your name?”

“Julie.”

“I don’t like nicknames in my class; you are Julius. And you, what’s your name?”

“Um, Billyius.”

140

But this is the same courtesy teachers are expected to extend to every other student. When i was a school child i went by my middle name. On the first day of class, the teacher would read out my first name from their list, and I’d tell them, “i go by this completely different name”. And EVERY SINGLE TEACHER respected my request. (Except my guidance counselor, but maybe i never bothered to tell him.) And lots of kids said things like, “I’m not Elizabeth, I’m Beth.” The teachers took notes, and respected all those requests. This is not a “new” ask of teachers.

You are suggesting not that we place an additional burden on teachers, but that we let teachers single out trans kids for disrespect.

So, you first say you don’t want to increase administrative burdens, but now you want to create a new need for paperwork? That’s not going to help the teachers. They are still going to need to remember that this Benjamin is “Ben” and that one is “Benji” and this other one is “Benjamin”. They all need to fill out this form? Or the teacher needs to decide if the name they requested “rises to the level” of needing a form?

It’s so much simpler for the teachers to just continue doing what every good teacher has done since forever, and jot a note for each kid who uses a name other than what’s on the school’s printed list.

There have not, historically, been tons of kids changing their name every week. I see no reason why this problem would suddenly emerge.

Exactly. This isn’t a hard problem.

I have a friend who is deadly allergic to nightshades, including potato. I wonder how his schools dealt with that. Not by forcing him to eat the same tater tots they fed the rest of the students, since he survived school.

Right, even people in very small minorites should be respected and accommodated. And when the necessary accommodation is to extend exactly the same courtesy to trans kids as teachers routinely extend to every other kid…

It really boggles my mind that this is even controversial.