An Edmond Public Schools parent filed a lawsuit against the district, claiming her 15-year-old daughter was attacked and "severely beaten" by a 17-year-old transgender student in the girl's bathroom.
The alleged incident took place at Edmond Memorial High School on October 26, 2022.
According to the lawsuit, the district knew the student, who is a biological male but identifies as female, used the bathroom assigned to girls.
The lawsuit, filed on May 25 in Oklahoma County, also cites an Oklahoma law that requires public school students to use restrooms that match the sex listed on their birth certificates.
Edmond Public Schools Superintendent Angela Grunewald addressed the issue in a YouTube video posted shortly after the alleged incident.
“You may ask yourself how can that happen?” Grunewald said. “It’s hard to explain, but if a parent comes in and enrolls their child as a certain gender, and when you look at that child by all social norms they look and present themselves as that gender, it’s not something that you would question. Also in high school, birth certificates are not required to start school. So there was no birth certificate in the (student's) file at the time to verify one way or another.”
Grunweld also said the transgender student was no longer enrolled at the school.
“We had two policies broken at this time,” Grunewald said. “One, we have a policy against fighting. And we have a policy that our school board enacted in August of this school year that says all students must go to the bathroom of their birth gender, and both of those policies were broken. And both of them have consequences. I can tell you consequences were given for both violations.”
The district didn't specify what those consequences were.
The parent is seeking $75,000 in damages.
On Thursday, Edmond Public Schools released an additional statement on the incident:
Edmond Public Schools is confident that when the facts are presented, it will be determined that the district fully complied with the law and acted in a reasonable manner.
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