I remember how it was -- JR
Florida judge exonerates Christian teacher who was fired for refusing to use a student's preferred pronouns because 'God makes no mistakes'
A Florida judge slammed transgenderism as a 'new secular faith' in a controversial ruling in favor of a teacher who was fired for refusing to use a student's preferred pronouns.
Science teacher Yojary Mundaray lost her job in 2019 after she slated a transgender student's requested pronouns, telling her that 'God doesn't make mistakes.'
Mundaray was fired after an investigation by school administrators at Jose de Diego Middle School in Miami, but law judge John Van Laningham called for the educator to be exonerated as he penned a scathing rebuke of transgender ideology.
'Advocates of transgenderism can be as doctrinaire as religious zealots these days,' he wrote in his decision. 'As this case demonstrates, adhering to the traditional view that gender is biologically determined can get a person excommunicated, from a job in this instance.'
According to Van Laningham's decision, the student - referred to only as 'Pat' - was born a biological female but asked the teacher to use male pronouns after being scolded by Mundaray for 'routine horse play.'
Mundaray refused after citing her religious beliefs, to which the student told her that 'God made a mistake.'
'I'm a Christian, and my God made no mistakes,' the teacher replied.
Students were reportedly left in tears at the hostile back-and-forth, with the school determining that her 'personal conduct... seriously reduced her effectiveness as an employee of the school district.'
The student complained to school administrators, sparking an internal investigation that led to Mundaray being fired in June 2020.
Although the educator lost her job after it was determined she had imposed her religious dogma on her classroom, Van Laningham argued that she was free to hold her beliefs.
'Given that Mundaray made no attempt to force Pat to accept, conform to, or even acknowledge any Christian doctrine, the allegation that she imposed her personal religious views on Pat is untrue,' he wrote.
'At most, Mundaray expressed her view that God is inerrant, which is about as anodyne a theological statement as one could make.
'Further, she did so only in defense of the God she worships. Surely, such cannot constitute a disciplinable offense in a country whose foundational principles include religious freedom.'
He felt that the dispute hinged on religious freedoms, arguing that 'the case is not about proselytizing but about transgender ideology.'
In his decision, Van Laningham also referred to the student with female pronouns, despite their past requests to be identified as a male.
Van Laningham noted a recent law passed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis that would have spared Mundaray's job, as it orders schools to identify students by their biological gender.
'In short, had the incident with Pat occurred today, instead of three years ago, Mundaray would have been protected against the significant loss she suffered simply for refusing to do what the law now deems false,' he wrote.
The judge's staunch views on transgenderism in schools, a hot button issue in the culture wars debates dominating American politics, were also on show in his decision this week.
He branded supporters of transgender people as followers of a 'new secular faith', adding: 'Advocates of transgenderism can be as doctrinaire as religious zealots these days.'
The case remains to be concluded, with the Education Practices Commission set to issue a final ruling.
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Two Dueling Court Rulings on Parental Notification in California. What Happens Next?
A Southern California school district requires teachers and staff to notify parents when their children say they have been bullied, are considering self-harm, or decide to publicly identify as a gender opposite their biological sex at school.
But California’s Democratic attorney general, Rob Bonta, sued the district to block that policy, claiming that it violates the state’s constitution; specifically, the students’ privacy rights.
Emily Rae, senior counsel at the nonprofit Liberty Justice Center, sat down with “The Daily Signal Podcast” to break down the issues at the center of the case. Her organization represents the Chino Valley Unified School District, the Los Angeles-area district whose policy Bonta opposes.
“While it is true that students have certain privacy rights, this is not a case that violates those privacy rights,” Rae said. “The child is going to school; the policy is only triggered or enforced if the child actually goes to a teacher or a school administrator and affirmatively says, ‘I want to go by a different name. I want to use different pronouns. I want to use a different bathroom.’”
“You know, this is an action that the student is taking, and it’s public in school,” she noted. “Anyone who works at the school needs to know this so that they don’t ‘misgender’ a child or ‘deadname’ a child. The only people who don’t know are parents, and that is absolutely not OK.”
(“Misgendering” involves referring to a person who claims to identify as transgender with the pronouns associated with their biological sex, while “deadnaming” involves referring to a person who claims to identify as transgender by his or her original name, as opposed to the name associated with his or her stated gender identity.)
The San Bernardino Superior Court issued a temporary restraining order Sept. 6, barring the Chino Valley Unified School District from enforcing its policy. Yet about a week later, Judge Roger T. Benitez in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California granted a preliminary injunction preventing the Escondido Union School District from punishing teachers Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West if they notified parents about a child’s claimed transgender identity.
The Escondido school district’s policy mandates that teachers and school staff will immediately accept a student’s claimed transgender identity and hide it from parents or guardians unless the student consents to notifying them.
Benitez ruled that Mirabelli and West are likely to succeed in arguing that the school district violated their First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion. The judge ordered the school district—and the California Board of Education—not to punish Mirabelli and West should they break the district’s policy.
Benitez cited nine Supreme Court rulings declaring that “parents have a right, grounded in the Constitution, to direct the education, health, and upbringing, and to maintain the well-being of their children.”
Bonta has suggested that the Escondido case has nothing to do with the Chino Valley case, but Escondido’s lawyer, Paul Jonna, a partner at LiMandri and Jonna LLP and special counsel to the Thomas More Society, said Bonta is defying Benitez’s order.
“The court’s analysis in the Mirabelli opinion focuses on the First Amendment and explains under the 14th Amendment parental rights are being violated by this policy,” Jonna told The Daily Signal last month. “If this policy in our case violates the U.S. Constitution, 14th Amendment, parental rights, that would apply anywhere in the state.”
Jonna sent an open letter to the California attorney general, warning, “If California continues to openly defy Judge Benitez’s preliminary injunction, and undermine its holding and reasoning, an injunction against the Chino Valley litigation may be necessary.”
Rae noted that “at the heart of both cases is the same idea, that schools should not be able to keep secrets from parents.”
She also noted that California law already stipulates that if parents are abusing or neglecting a child, the state should intervene. Bonta’s preferred transgender-secrets policies are based on the idea that parents who disagree with the state’s ideology on gender represent a threat to their own children, regardless of any evidence to the contrary.
“So, anyone that’s trying to say that kids can get hurt because of this, it’s a red herring,” Rae argued.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/10/06/inside-fight-keep-parents-know-kids-gender-california-schools
*********************************************Stop Sanitizing Education: ‘If It’s Not Offensive to Anyone, It’s Probably Not Important Either’
The American education system used to be the envy of the world, and we need to return to the tried and true ways of traditional classical education, according to the founder of a standardized test for classical education that’s an alternative to the College Board’s SAT.
“The mainstream education system is at fault in a generation that thinks America is the big, bad bully and that isn’t grateful for the country. A country cannot be sustained on this,” Jeremy Tate, founder of the Classic Learning Test, told Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts on his “Kevin Roberts Show” podcast. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s news and commentary outlet.)
Tate, a former teacher, said he created the Classic Learning Test because of his concerns about the College Board, which he called “left-wing.” The test is for grades 3-12 and can be an alternative to the SAT and ACT for select colleges that value classical education models.
The College Board has “become deeply compromised” over the past 10 years, according to Tate. A 2020 report by the National Association of Scholars found the board has ties with the Chinese Communist Party. The report showed the board was whitewashing the revolution in China and diminishing the role of Christianity and Western Civilization.
The College Board has had a “tremendous opportunity” to decide what is and isn’t important in American education, and that even affects private religious schools. For example, many students won’t take classes such as philosophy and Christian apologetics at Catholic schools because the College Board doesn’t offer AP credits for them, and that could harm students’ GPAs even if they were to get As in those classes. That is because AP courses are graded on a different scale and can boost GPAs above 4.0.
“Here we have this left-wing organization, the College Board—make no mistake, it is a left-wing organization—calling the shots for our Catholic school … that kids are not taking philosophy or Christian apologetics because the College Board doesn’t prioritize it,” said Tate.
In response, Tate created the alternative test, which has three sections measuring verbal reasoning, grammar and writing, and quantitative reasoning, but uses different classic source materials for the assessment.
Tate said the College Board’s Sensitivity Committee “has gone totally insane” and everything is declared offensive to someone on the committee, according to people he spoke to who work there. He took the opposite approach with the Classic Learning Test and decided “if it’s not offensive to anyone, it’s probably not important either.”
“Education always is about cultivating the affections in some way for good or for ill,” Tate said, and this current generation isn’t taught “the genius of our system of government and how many millions of people it has lifted out of poverty.”
Particularly after the COVID-19 school shutdowns in 2020, math and reading scores for U.S. students dropped to the lowest levels in decades. Now, many are noticing the need for education reform.
“Everyone knows that we’re in a crisis and what we’ve needed is a solution,” said Tate. “I think classical education is now, I think, front and center as the alternative to the mainstream progressive nonsense that’s gotten us where we are.”
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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