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Like thousands of school districts across the country, the West Point School District in northern Virginia enforces a policy requiring staff and faculty to refer to all students by the pronouns they prefer. Such policies are widely recognized by and as critical to the well-being of transgender students, who face for harassment, bullying, and poor health and academic outcomes in schools that do not enforce such a policy.

In July of 2022, the ACLU and the ACLU of Virginia filed an amicus brief in support of the school district and policies requiring K-12 public school teachers to address transgender students in a nondiscriminatory manner during class instruction. The brief explains that when a K-12 teacher addresses a captive audience of public school students during class, the teacher is speaking on behalf of the school district and not as a private citizen, and the school district has a right and responsibility to ensure that its teachers do not discriminate while delivering class instruction on the school district’s behalf. Indeed, under any standard of scrutiny, a school district has a compelling governmental interest in ensuring that its own educational services are being provided to its students in a nondiscriminatory manner. A school district policy regulating the manner in which teachers address transgender students during class instruction is narrowly tailored to that compelling interest.