{"id":880,"date":"2024-05-07T19:48:09","date_gmt":"2024-05-07T19:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/makamuki.com\/?p=880"},"modified":"2024-05-07T19:48:09","modified_gmt":"2024-05-07T19:48:09","slug":"teacher-who-was-suspended-after-refusing-to-use-students-preferred-pronouns-wins-big-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/makamuki.com\/?p=880","title":{"rendered":"Teacher Who Was Suspended After Refusing To Use Student\u2019s Preferred Pronouns Wins Big Award"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"5c53f654ecb6b2e2c397431cfdb6dd0a\" data-index=\"1\" style=\"float: none; margin:99px 0 99px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<!-- Composite Start -->\r\n<div id=\"M926082ScriptRootC1556461\"><\/div>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/jsc.adskeeper.com\/m\/a\/makamuki.com.1556461.js\" async><\/script>\r\n<!-- Composite End -->\n<\/div>\n\n<p>Kansas teacher Pamela Ricard recently sued her school district, Geary County Schools, after being reprimanded and suspended for three days for refusing to use one of her student\u2019s&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/tiphero.com\/teacher-placed-on-leave\">preferred pronouns<\/a>. In her own words, the reason was \u201cfor addressing a biologically female student by the student\u2019s legal and enrolled last name.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ricard, who teaches at Fort Riley Middle School, was told by a school counselor that this student&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/tiphero.com\/demi-lovato-are-non-binary\">wanted to be called a different first name<\/a>&nbsp;than their legal one, and also preferred a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/tiphero.com\/identified-as-alien\">different gender\u2019s<\/a>&nbsp;pronouns (he\/him) even though this student was born a female.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, due to her religious beliefs Ricard decided to refer to the student as \u201cMiss [legal\/enrolled last name]\u201d to avoid using the student\u2019s new preferred first name. She felt this was a good middle ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Though there was no set policy in place that would address this matter, according to the lawsuit, Ricard was suspended and reprimanded \u201cunder generic school district policies related to bullying by staff.\u201d However, one was set in place when Ricard returned from her suspension, stating that \u201cemployees should be aware and make an effort to utilize the pronouns an individual requests to be identified by.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, Ricard\u2019s lawsuit claims the policy \u201cviolated her conscience.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cMs. Ricard is a Christian and holds sincere religious beliefs consistent with the traditional Christian and biblical understanding of the human person and biological sex,\u201d the lawsuit stated. \u201cMs. Ricard believes that God created human beings as either male or female, that this sex is fixed in each person from the moment of conception, and that it cannot be changed, regardless of an individual person\u2019s feelings, desires, or preferences.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After attending federal court In May, Ricard was awarded a whopping $95,000, with attorneys stating that Ricard was \u201cfree to speak without violating her conscience by communicating with parents in a manner consistent with how she is required to address the students at school.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Additionally, they said that Ricard was okay to continue to \u201cavoid pronouns for students who have requested pronouns inconsistent with their biological sex.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The new policy also stated that staff members could not disclose students\u2019 preferred names and pronouns to their parents, and the court ruled against the district keeping that in the policy as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The district supplied zero comment and there hasn\u2019t been any updates on where the current policies stand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What do you think of the results of this settlement, or how the school district treated this case?<\/p>\n\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kansas teacher Pamela Ricard recently sued her school district, Geary County Schools, after being reprimanded and suspended for three days for refusing to use one of her student\u2019s&nbsp;preferred pronouns. In her own&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":881,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/makamuki.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Screenshot-2024-05-07-214632.png","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/makamuki.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/makamuki.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/makamuki.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/makamuki.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/makamuki.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=880"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/makamuki.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":882,"href":"https:\/\/makamuki.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880\/revisions\/882"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/makamuki.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/makamuki.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/makamuki.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/makamuki.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}