Hundreds of students walk out in support of school officials ousted over trans athlete

A Florida school principal, James Cecil, and four other staff members were “reassigned” after an anonymous tip accused them of supporting a transgender girl’s desire to play volleyball. The school officials were accused of allowing“improper student participation in sports.”

Students at Monarch High School in Coconut Creek didn’t take kindly to the decision to remove the popular staff members for such an insincere reason, and hundreds of them walked out of class to protest.

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The principal, assistant principal, athletics director, volleyball coach, and an information management technician were removed from campus on Monday.

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A Broward County Public Schools Special Investigative Unit is looking into allegations that school officials allowed a girl who was not assigned as female at birth to play with other females on the school volleyball team. Earlier this month, the student had lost a legal challenge against the state’s draconian and cruel “Fairness In Women’s Sports” law. The law forbids transgender girls (but not trans boys) from participating in school sports.

Students who walked out wore pink and carried signs with messages like “Free Cecil” and “Let her play.”

“I don’t think it should be a problem big enough for you to have the school’s principal reassigned,” said one Monarch High student. “At the end of the day, that’s just an extracurricular.”

The state law says student sports designated for females, women, or girls are not open to “males,” and a “statement of a student’s biological sex on the student’s official birth certificate is considered to have correctly stated the student’s biological sex at birth if the statement was filed at or near the time of the student’s birth.”

“I don’t know if they even knew the law, understand the law, what training the district has given all of our athletic directors, all of our admins, all of our coaches on the law,” Anna Fusco, president of the Broward Teachers Union, said. “There’s a lot that needs to be known here that is not known.”