Mississippi high school can forbid trans teen from wearing dress to graduation, judge rules

A federal judge late Friday night denied a request that would have allowed a transgender student at a Mississippi Coast high school to wear a dress to receive her diploma at a Saturday graduation ceremony.

Judge Taylor McNeel issued the ruling after hearing hours of testimony from the Harrison Central High student, the superintendent of the Harrison County School District and others in federal court in Gulfport.

McNeel noted there were no previous rulings centering around transgender dress code violations to reference that would have supported a decision to go against the School District’s existing dress code policy for graduating seniors .

The emergency injunction hearing was scheduled for Friday after the ACLU on Thursday filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court asking a judge to allow the Harrison High student to allow her to dress as she wished instead of being forced to wear boy’s clothes and shoes.

The ACLU filed the lawsuit on behalf of L.B. and her parents, Samantha and Henry Brown. ACLU attorneys McKenna E. Raney-Gray, Joshua F. Tom and Linda S. Morris are representing the student and her family.

Harrison County School District, the school board, Superintendent Mitchell King and Harrison Central High Principal Kelly Fuller are named as defendants in the complaint.

L.B., her mother, and King testified Friday.

L.B. said she learned the School District wouldn’t allow her to wear a dress to the ceremony on May 9 during a meeting with Fuller. By then, she and her mother had already bought the white dress and shoes she planned to wear under her cap and gown at the ceremony.

The news left her distraught and depressed, she said, because she had already dressed as a transgender girl throughout her four years at Harrison Central High.

“It felt like I had worked so hard to get to this moment, and now I can’t enjoy it,’ she said.

After she learned the news, L.B. called her mom crying.

“It hurt to know it hurt my daughter,” her mother said Friday, adding she was stunned the school made the decision at what seemed like the last minute and long after the family had invited friends, relatives, and others to a graduation after- party to celebrate L.B’s accomplishments.

The School District’s attorney, Wynn Clark, argued the mother and daughter duo had signed a dress code form for graduation that outlined how girls had to wear white dresses and certain shoes and boys had to wear a shirt and tie and boy’s shoes. They said because L.B. was born a biological male, she had to dress like a boy.

The school district backed up its decision for not allowing L.B. to wear a dress at graduation by citing the Harrison Central High graduation dress code that says girls must wear a white dress and dress shoes and boys must wear a white button-down shirt, black dress shoes, black dress pants, and a tie or bow tie.

L.B. has identified as trans her entire high school career and has worn dresses and other women’s clothing to school for four years. She said in court papers that she would miss the Harrison Central graduation ceremony if she couldn’t wear a dress.

Despite the mandate, the graduation dress code at the school does not prevent L.B. from wearing makeup, women’s jewelry and other accessories.

She is not allowed to wear women’s heels.

School district’s response to lawsuit

The school district denied L.B.’s claim that she had very little notice about having to wear boy’s clothes to graduation by citing the graduation dress code that’s been in place for more than two years.

Additionally, the parents sign a commencement agreement two-and-a-half months before graduation, part of which acknowledges the dress code.

“L.B.’s filing left little time for a full briefing,” the response to the complaint, filed by Wynn E. Clark, said. “But the District has done its best to respond on short notice.”

Wynn also argued that since L.B. is already done with high school, she is technically no longer a student and must comply with the dress code, and the district’s decision “does not infringe on protected rights or justify extraordinary injunctive relieve.”

The Sun Herald reviewed the commencement ceremony dress code that is available online and found that there is no mention of transgender or LGBTQIA students, and it does not say that students must be dressed by the sex they were assigned at birth. The regular Harrison Central High School dress code also does not mention gender markers or say students must abide by their sex assigned at birth.

However, King testified that the school relies on birth certificates to identify the gender of students and not based on one’s alleged gender identity.

King said the issue involving L.B. came up after he saw another transgender student wearing a dress at an earlier school-sponsored event for honor roll students. He said he felt like he needed to check with all the schools to ensure other transgender students followed the dress policy for graduation ceremonies.

King said there were four trans students in the School District, and that included L.B., that they suspected might not follow the dress code policy for graduations.

King said he had the individual schools check with those students to ensure they followed the dress policies for graduations.

‘No rational to justify’ school district’s decision

The school’s policy, shared via Facebook on April 22, does not explicitly discuss sex or gender and does not say students must dress according to their sex assigned at birth.

“Defendants have offered no rationale that could justify the severe and ongoing deprivation of Plaintiff’s constitutional and statutory rights to be free from gender discrimination,” the lawsuit says.

It further alleges that the school declining to reconsider and allow L.B. to dress as she chooses “during the final and perhaps most important event of her high school career serves no legitimate interest or justification.”

The lawsuit alleges gender discrimination as a violation of constitutional rights and federal law, specifically Title IX, the First Amendment’s freedom of expression clause, and the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause. According to the lawsuit, the temporary restraining order asks the court to prohibit the district from taking action for alleged noncompliance with its graduation dress code policies.

Superintendent King allegedly was behind the decision to prohibit the student from wearing a dress at her graduation.

A timeline of the events

According to the complaint, the student first realized something was wrong on May 4 when Harrison Central High Assistant Principal Christopher Spencer told L.B. that Fuller would be reaching out to discuss a matter.

But it wasn’t until May 9 that Fuller called L.B. to the principal’s office and asked what she planned to wear to graduation. When L.B. said she planned to wear a dress that she and her mother picked out, Fuller told her she would have to wear boy’s clothes to graduation.

Fuller, the complaint said, told L.B. the meeting with her was prompted by King, who called and asked what trans students would be wearing to graduation.

The next day, Samantha Brown, L.B.’s mother, called King to ask about the dress code rule. King told her L.B. would be unable to participate in graduation if she wore a dress and heels. Samantha Brown also claims King said L.B. “is still a boy” and that “he needs to wear pants, socks, and shoes, like a boy.”

On May 11, L.B. was handed the graduation dress code on the principal’s letterhead that outlined the policy when she picked up her cap and gown.

Lawyers tried to get the MS School District to reconsider

The complaint says the Browns hired lawyers for the ACLU, who emailed the school district’s attorneys on May 16 and asked that they reconsider their stance. After reaching out again on May 17, the school district said they would not reconsider, prompting the call for an emergency injunction and, ultimately, the hearing Friday in U.S. District Court.

The Sun Herald reached out to the School District for comment but did not receive a response before Friday’s hearing.

According to an ACLU press release, the district has not taken any action to check the planned outfits of any other students.