With the election approaching, some residents are receiving emails urging them to vote for “parent-approved candidates” who will “take a stand against this dangerous agenda!”

“The hijacking of Title IX must force all citizens of the Byron Center to take a stand to protect our children,” said one email, arguing that “boys who identify as girls” will be opened to girls’ bathrooms and others will be “forced to accept” prefer. pronoun.

“I think this whole community of people who are afraid of Title IX think that, like RuPaul, they’re going to kick down high school doors or something and demand things from this administration,” said Williams, the local resident who advocates high school. LGBTQ Anti-Discrimination Protections.

“And if the administration doesn’t give them, they will file a lawsuit. Instead of thinking about the trans kids who are scared, who are afraid for their lives, they just want to belong. They just want to be accepted.”

Courtroom battles

School board elections are nonpartisan, but far from apolitical. Local teachers’ unions supports the candidatesglossy flyers appear in residents’ mailboxes, and candidates are labeled as extremists.

Moms for Liberty, a national “parental rights” group, has endorsed several candidates in 2022, but it was not very successful. Now they’ve gone to court as a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit that’s blocking the implementation of the new rules in many schools and states across the country.

Last month, the Great Education Initiative, a group that says it advocates for parents’ rights, student safety and “orthodox education,” filed a separate federal lawsuit challenging Title IX in Michigan schools.

In its complaint, the group claims that many Michigan families have deeply held religious beliefs that would be violated if someone had to use different pronouns for someone than the sex they were assigned at birth.

The lawsuit also addresses students’ fears about sharing bathrooms or locker rooms with people of the opposite sex.

The lawyers are asking a federal court to strike down the new Title IX rule as illegal and say the government can’t prevent school districts from designating spaces like bathrooms separated by biological sex or requiring school teachers and other employees to use “preferred pronouns or honorifics.”

The lawsuit involves families whose students attend Forest Hills, Thornapple Kellogg, Walled Lake and Hartland public schools.

The The Great Lakes Education Projecta state group linked to former U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is funding efforts to elect school board candidates in some of those districts, according to a list of independent expenditures provided by Executive Director Beth DeShone.

Parents are generally concerned about school district transparency and accountability, DeShone said, but that Title IX concerns have added a new wrinkle to many races. Districts “still have a great deal of latitude to create a school district-wide policy that falls within the bounds” of anti-discrimination laws, she added.

Make school boards boring again

The Title IX policy was also a source of division in other states. But because of ongoing litigation, 26 states are currently blocked from applying the new federal regulations.

In Michigan, Hartland Consolidated Schools approved a protocol in July for transgender students had a date with officials and parents before using a bathroom that is different from the one aligned with their birth sex.

In Rockford, a married couple is suing Rockford Public Schools for allegedly treating her daughter as a boy using a different name and pronouns without informing the parents. In Houghton Lake, there is an online petition asking school board members to resign based on their decision regarding Title IX.