A Fort Lauderdale area high school is paying a stiff fine for violating Florida’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act. Monarch High School in Coconut Creek, Florida, will need to pay $16,500 for allowing a boy, who identifies as a girl, to compete against girls in volleyball during the last two seasons.
In addition, the school’s principal, James Cecil, and district athletic director, Patty Brown, will be required to to attend rules seminars so that they will not again run afoul of the state law protecting girls in school-sanctioned athletics. The school will be placed on probation for 11 months. The biological male will not be allowed to compete in sports, even as a boy, for 11 months.
The school must also host an on-campus seminar for other staff about implementing the Fairness in Women’s Sports law prior to the next school year.
Previously, Cecil and several school staffers had been reassigned to non-school sites while the matter was being investigated.
The 10th grader had played in 33 volleyball matches over the last two seasons despite the 2021 law forbidding males to compete in female sports.
“Thanks to the leadership of Governor Ron DeSantis, Florida passed legislation to protect girls’ sports and we will not tolerate any school that violates this law,” said Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, Jr. “We applaud the swift action taken by the Florida High School Athletic Association to ensure there are serious consequences for this illegal behavior.”
Jessica Norton, the unnamed boy’s mother, who works at the school, blasted the Broward County Public Schools for what she called the “forced outing” of her child. Norton claimed that observing the state law was “a direct attempt to endanger” the boy.
“A lot of things were taken from my family this week — our privacy, sense of safety, and right to self-determination,” Norton said in a statement. “There is a long history in this country of outing people against their will — forced outing, particularly of a child, is a direct attempt to endanger the person being outed.”
According to the Miami Herald, the boy has been identifying as a girl since before elementary school and has been taking testosterone blockers since age 11. Reportedly, the boy is taking estrogen in an attempt to experience puberty as a female. The boy’s gender has even been changed on his birth certificate.
None of that means he isn’t a boy, which means playing volleyball as a girl is a violation of Florida law. The boy’s family has sued the school district and the State of Florida and is being assisted by the LGBT activist group The Human Rights Campaign, which is providing legal representation.
The Human Rights Campaign said in a statement that the punishment “does not change the fact that the law preventing transgender girls from playing sports with their peers is unconstitutionally rooted in anti-transgender bias, and the Association’s claim to ensure equal opportunities for student athletes rings hollow.”
“The reckless indifference to the well-being of our client and her family, and all transgender students across the State, will not be ignored,” said Jason Starr of The Human Rights Campaign.
Allowing kids to receive risky medical intervention because they believe they are the opposite sex is a location-specific issue. Some states refer to such procedures as “life saving,” while in Texas such intervention has been officially referred to as “child abuse.”
Anyone who believes that a boy participating in girls’ sports is simply a “social justice” issue would do well to remember the case of North Carolina volleyball player Payton McNabb.
McNabb was seriously injured when a male player spiked a ball into her face during a match, causing ongoing headaches, impaired vision, and even partial paralysis since the incident.
