Athletic association sanctions Monarch High over transgender volleyball player

The Florida High School Athletic Association sanctioned Monarch High on Tuesday because a transgender student played on its varsity volleyball team, a violation of a state law championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The association is fining the Coconut Creek school $16,500, according to a letter sent Tuesday to the high school’s interim principal, Moira Sweeting-Miller.

The student at the center of the controversy has been banned from playing on any of the association’s participating sports teams — which are nearly all high school sports teams in Florida — through Nov. 20, 2024. That’s a year after the potential violation was identified.

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The state and athletic association say the student’s participation on a varsity girls’ volleyball team violates a state law passed in 2021 that bans anyone born male from competing on girls’ athletic teams.

Equality Florida, an LGBTQ rights group, weighed in on the controversy Tuesday during a media briefing in front of the school district headquarters in Fort Lauderdale.

“So now we are punishing student athletes and wasting money on fines that could be used to support our schools and our students,” Jennifer Solomon, parents and families support manager for Equality Florida, told reporters at the event.

The $16,500 fine is based on a penalty of $500 per contest. The student participated in 33 games during the fall of 2022 and the fall of 2023, says the letter, written by Justin Harrison, associate executive director for eligibility and compliance for the association.

The association is also placing Monarch on probation through Nov. 20, 2024, and has issued it a reprimand. The letter also said Monarch High leaders must attend compliance seminars in 2024 and 2025.

The student’s participation in volleyball is also under investigation by the Broward School District.

“The District is in receipt of the letter from the Florida High School Athletic Association regarding the recent incident at Monarch High School,” district spokesman John Sullivan told the South Florida Sun Sentinel in an email. “The District’s investigation into the matter remains ongoing at this time.”

The school district has reassigned or suspended five school officials, a move that prompted two days of walkouts last month.

Those who are at least temporarily gone from the school are Principal James Cecil; Assistant Principal Kenneth May; Athletic Director Dione Hester; Volleyball Coach Alex Burgess; and Jessica Norton, an information management specialist who identified herself last week as the mother of the student athlete.

The district self-reported the violation to the athletic association, the letter said.

“The Florida High School Athletic Association appreciates your efforts to make sure the student-athletes in our state all receive equal and fair opportunities,” the letter says.

Manny Diaz, commission of education, praised DeSantis on the social media platform X for championing the law.

“We will not tolerate any school that violates this law,” he wrote. “We applaud the swift action taken by the @FHSAA to ensure there are serious consequences for this illegal behavior.”

The Department of Education and athletic association are both controlled by appointees of DeSantis.

Equality Florida officials said these actions are hurting students, parents and educators,

“Students’ lives and administrators’ livelihoods were upended as a result of the DeSantis administration’s cruel focus on culture wars,” Solomon said at the media briefing. “As a result, 2,300 students lost of beloved principal and assistant principal simply because a transgender student played volleyball.”

The state’s actions exacerbate the hardships that transgender kids face, said Andre Cardona, a 17-year-old transgender boy who spoke at the media briefing. He’s a junior now at New World School of the Arts in Miami, which he described as a supportive environment, but he said he faced bullying when he started identifying as male in the seventh grade.

“I remember being pushed, touched and mocked by kids,” he said. “People came up to me and asked me what I have in my pants.

“This is the reality of trans children in Florida today,” Cardona said. “What I find fundamentally lacking is a sense of humanity in this conversation. We are not spoken of as individually conscious people, human beings.”

Solomon added, “All children deserve dignity and equality under the law. Florida’s trans sports ban is a reminder of the discrimination and harm our trans youth face every single day.”