The Department of Education (DOE) has found that Owasso Public Schools in Oklahoma – the school system that trans teen Nex Benedict attended before he died earlier this year following an altercation with bullies in the school bathroom – violated Title IX by allowing rampant sexual harassment in school.
Earlier this year, 16-year-old Benedict’s death made national headlines. The Owasso High School sophomore was targeted by three other students in a school bathroom. He told a school resource officer that the other students beat him until he “blacked out,” and he told his mother that he had been bullied by three other students because of his gender identity.
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He died several days later, leading to outcry and speculation that his death was related to injuries sustained during the beating. The Oklahoma state medical examiner’s office ruled his death a suicide.
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His mother, Sue Benedict, said that Nex had been knocked to the ground and hit his head, and she went to the school to find Nex with bruises on his face and scratches on the back of his head. Sue Benedict said she reported the harassment to school staff and tried to get the school to use security footage to identify the bullies, but she said that the school did nothing and she was never informed of her right to file a Title IX complaint.
Other students and graduates also spoke out about the rampant anti-LGBTQ+ culture in the high school, including “Marley H.,” who said in an HRC video that another student repeatedly taunted her with an anti-LGBTQ+ slur, and teachers did nothing.
“It hurts to know that not only do your teachers personally not support you, if a student bullies you or harasses you or calls you names, they aren’t going to do anything about it,” she said. “It promotes a culture where you feel like you shouldn’t report issues.”
Following Benedict’s death, the DOE’s Office for Civil Rights investigated the school district and found several violations of Title IX, which bans sex-based discrimination in schools. Under the Biden administration, anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination has been treated as a form of sex-based discrimination because it’s impossible to discriminate based on sexual orientation or gender identity without taking sex into account.
The Office for Civil Rights said that it found numerous incidents over the past three years where the district knew about sexual harassment but didn’t do enough to stop it. This includes reports that a teacher was “grooming female students on social media through sending more than 130 messages to them describing their physical appearance and requesting their photographs”; a young elementary school student who faced sexual harassment; a male student who repeatedly hit and made sexual comments to a female student in sixth grade; and other instances where students were targeted with sex-based slurs and physical violence.
DOE said that the school district’s “pattern of inconsistent responses to reports it received of sexual harassment – infrequently responding under Title IX or not responding at all – rose to the level that the district’s response to some families’ sexual harassment reports was deliberately indifferent to students’ civil rights,” noting that the district only conducted two formal Title IX investigations in this time period and didn’t even have full records of them.
DOE says they reached an agreement with the school district that will require them to better inform parents of their rights under Title IX, review its Title IX policies, survey students about sexual harassment in the district, review all sexual harassment complaints from the previous three years in the district, provide Title IX training to staff and students on sexual harassment, and develop a better record-keeping system for Title IX complaints.
“Today’s resolution agreement from the U.S. Department of Education leaves no doubt: the Owasso School District failed Nex Benedict and many other vulnerable students under their care,” HRC President Kelley Robinson said in a statement.
“Owasso students and their families did not receive the fair and equitable review process from their school district guaranteed to them under Title IX; at worst, some students experienced discrimination Congress has long guaranteed they shall not endure at school,” Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Catherine E. Lhamon said in a statement.
“The district has signed a robust agreement to assure that students who attend school in the district will be afforded their rights under Title IX, including the right to file a complaint, learn about and receive supportive services individualized to their needs, and benefit from federal nondiscrimination protection when they experience harassment.”
Editor’s note: This article mentions suicide. If you need to talk to someone now, call the Trans Lifeline at 1-877-565-8860. It’s staffed by trans people, for trans people. The Trevor Project provides a safe, judgement-free place to talk for LGBTQ youth at 1-866-488-7386. You can also call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.
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