Transgender Americans such as Rachel Tudor have been fighting for their rights at work, school and housing for years. On Monday, the Supreme Court gave them hope.

For the majority of his career at Unified Police Department, Taylor Scruggs loved his work. If he wasn’t taking phone calls or writing reports, he said, he was being proactive, out finding stolen cars or fugitives or illegal drugs.

A former teacher, he said he loved the ebb and flow of police work, that every day was different than the one before. But there was at least one constant.

“I went home every night, and was like, ‘Man, I can’t wait to get up tomorrow and do this all over again,’” Scruggs said.

Yet when the UPD detective, with ten years of experience on the force, came out as transgender and started physically transitioning, people around the office treated him differently, he said…

Read more: https://www.sltrib.com/news/2020/04/24/ex-unified-police-officer/

A transgender English professor at Kingsborough College says colleagues’ failure to use up-to-date they/them pronouns partly justifies they/their lawsuit against the school for gender discrimination.

Red Washburn, who uses they/them pronouns and has taught English and Women and Gender Studies at the CUNY Brooklyn community college since 2011, alleges in a Brooklyn Federal Court lawsuit filed Friday that the school began discriminating against them in 2017 when they came out as transgender.

Washburn’s boss continually referred to the professor by their [“dead name” (former name)] despite the fact that Washburn legally changed their name to “Red.” Colleagues also continued to use the pronouns “she” and “her” for Washburn, despite the fact that the professor repeatedly advised them to use they/them pronouns.

“While occasional misgendering could be attributed to innocent error, the protracted and continuing misgendering of Dr. Washburn, despite continued notice, created a hostile environment based on gender,” the lawsuit says.

Washburn claims the school defunded the Women and Gender Studies department soon after Washburn came out as transgender.

“Six months after I came out as trans at work by requesting a name and pronoun change and sharing that I was getting top surgery, Kingsborough’s administration announced that it was defunding my concentration,” Washburn wrote in an op-ed for the Daily News in June.

Top surgery is reconstructive surgery to a transgender person’s chest.

Washburn also alleges in the lawsuit that they were moved into a new office at the school that was no more than a tiny storage closet, claiming the room did not even have space for a desk.

In the fall of 2018, the day before classes started, Kingsborough College cancelled Washburn’s Sexuality and Literature class, claiming the enrollment was too low, the lawsuit said.

“This explanation was incorrect, as the amount of enrollment was the same as that considered sufficient for other classes,” the lawsuit said.

“[Kingsborough College] is, I believe, a safe place neither for gender non-conforming and trans faculty to work, nor for such students to learn,” Washburn wrote in their op-ed.

Noah Goldberg
New York Daily News
Noah Goldberg covers Brooklyn supreme and federal courts for the New York Daily News. He previously covered criminal justice for the Brooklyn Eagle.

A former social studies teacher at an Upper East Side public middle school was relentlessly hectored by students and colleagues — and eventually let go — because he is gay and stood up for a bullied student, a new lawsuit alleges.

During his two-year tenure as a full-time teacher at Robert F. Wagner Middle School, Robert Halkitis suffered a campaign of harassment that included vandals scrawling a slur on his bulletin board and a student calling him a “f—ing f—-t” in his classroom, alleges a lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court on Monday.

The torment also included a school clerk suggesting that he was having a sexual relationship with a male colleague on school grounds, court papers say.

Halkitis’s sexual orientation wasn’t the only reason he lost his job — he often stood up for a “non-binary, gender non-conforming student” who was bullied throughout middle school for their gender expression, he alleges.

According to court papers, Halkitis informed school principal Jennifer Rehn-Losquadro — also a defendant in the suit — about the bullying and was told that she would “look into it.” But Halkitis claims that the student’s reports of harassment were not included in the school’s Online Occurrence Reporting System report to the Department of Education.

In June, Halkitis received word that his contract was being discontinued but was not given a reason. This came after Halkitis received ratings of “effective” on his annual teacher assessments for both years of his tenure, he alleges.

“I think he was thought of as a really good teacher,” Jillian Weiss, an attorney representing Halkitis in the case, told The Post. “He was standing up for students who were receiving bullying in the classroom and he was receiving no support.”

Since his dismissal, Halkitis has been unable to find work with other districts — and he claims Donalda Chumney, the superintendent for the district that includes Robert F. Wagner, scuttled his chances of getting a new job with another DOE school by having his nomination revoked.

Miranda Barbot, a DOE spokeswoman, said the department will review the suit.

“All staff have a right to a working environment free from discrimination,” she said.

Halkitis is seeking unspecified damages.

It isn’t the first time this year that Robert F. Wagner has come under fire for the way it handles reports of bullying.

In March, the mother of an African-American sixth-grader at the 1,350-student school learned that a white classmate made a noose from yarn and draped it around her son’s neck — and that a teacher witnessed the racist incident but did not report it to administrators.