Maryland
Judge rules trans teacher’s lawsuit against P.G. County can go to trial
Gay man files separate case charging discrimination

A federal judge in Maryland issued a ruling on Tuesday, Jan. 18, clearing the way for a lawsuit filed by transgender former English teacher Jennifer Eller in 2018 charging the Prince George’s County, Md., Public Schools with discrimination and harassment based on her gender identity to proceed to a trial.
In the ruling, Judge Theodore D. Chuang of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland denied key parts of several motions filed by attorneys representing the P.G. County Public Schools that in effect called for the dismissal of the lawsuit. The motions, among other things, claimed the lawsuit failed to provide sufficient evidence that Eller was subjected to discrimination and harassment, which forced her to resign due to a hostile work environment.
Chuang also ruled against a separate motion introduced by Eller’s attorneys calling for him to issue a summary judgement decision affirming all the lawsuit’s allegations that would have ended the litigation in Eller’s favor without the need to go to trial.
Eller’s lawsuit charges that school officials acted illegally by failing to intervene when she was subjected to a hostile work environment for five years that included abuse and harassment by students, parents, fellow teachers, and supervisors and retaliation by school administrators.
The lawsuit alleges that the school system and its administrators in its actions against Eller violated Title VII of the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the federal Education Amendments Act of 1972, the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution, the Maryland Fair Employment Practices Act, and the nondiscrimination provision of the Prince George’s County Code.
“We think the judge did as best he could,” said Omar Gonzales-Pagan, an attorney with the LGBTQ litigation group Lambda Legal, which, along with the D.C. law firm Arnold & Porter, are representing Eller in her lawsuit.
“The takeaway is that the case is now in a posture to proceed to trial,” Gonzales-Pagan told the Washington Blade. “The court found that the alleged facts and the information as discovered throughout the case in the discovery process is sufficient to allow a jury to find whether Jennifer Eller was subjected to a hostile work environment and constructive discharge and retaliation unlawfully by the defendants,” he said.
By the term constructive discharge, Gonzales-Pagan was referring to the lawsuit’s charge that Eller was forced to resign from her teaching job in 2017 after being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder due to the alleged abuse she faced on the job.
P.G. County Public Schools officials have declined to comment on the lawsuit on grounds that the school system has a longstanding policy of not discussing pending litigation. However, in its response to the lawsuit in court filings, school system officials have denied Eller’s allegations of discrimination, harassment, and retaliation.
“For years, I was aggressively misgendered, attacked and harassed in the hallways and even in my own classroom by students, peers and supervisors,” Eller said in a statement released by her attorneys.
“My pleas for help and for sensitivity training on LGBTQ issues for students and staff, were ignored,” Eller said in her statement. “The relentless harassment stripped me of the joy of teaching and forced me to resign,” she said. “It is time for Prince George’s County Public Schools to be held accountable.”
The lawsuit says the harassment and discriminatory action against her began in 2011 when she began presenting as female during the school year. It says school officials initially responded to her complaints about the harassment by demanding that she stop dressing as a woman and return to wearing men’s clothes, which she refused to do.
In a separate action, gay former Spanish teacher Jared Hester filed on his own without an attorney a lawsuit in the Maryland federal court charging the P.G. County Public Schools with failing to take action to prevent him from being subjected to discrimination and harassment similar to some of the allegations made in Eller’s lawsuit.
Hester told the Blade that he was subjected to harassment by students who repeatedly called him “faggot,” but school officials, including the principal of the middle school where he taught, refused to take action to stop the harassment.
He provided the Blade with copies of earlier complaints he filed against school system officials with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights, and the P.G County Public Schools’ internal Office of Equity Assurance. Each of the three agencies issued rulings against Hester’s complaints, with two of them saying sufficient evidence could not be found to support his allegations.
The EEOC, in a Nov. 3, 2021 “dismissal” notice, told Hester the EEOC “will not proceed further with its investigation, and makes no determination about whether further investigation would establish violations of the statute.” The notice added, “This does not mean the claims have no merit” or that the respondent, meaning the P.G. County Public Schools, “is in compliance with the statutes.”
The notice did not give a reason for why it chose to end its investigation into Hester’s complaint, but it said his filing with the EEOC cleared the way for him to file a lawsuit to further his case against the school system.
Hester told the Blade he reached out to Lambda Legal to represent him in his lawsuit, but the LGBTQ litigation group declined to take on his case without giving a reason. Gonzalez-Pagan, the Lambda attorney working on the Eller case, said he was unfamiliar with Hester’s request for representation. Another Lambda official couldn’t immediately be reached to determine the reason for its decision not to represent Hester.

Maryland
A Baltimore theater educator lost jobs at Johns Hopkins and the Kennedy Center
Tavish Forsyth concluded they could not work for Trump

BY WESLEY CASE | Tavish Forsyth had come to a conclusion: They could not work for President Donald Trump.
So the 32-year-old Baltimore resident stripped down, turned on their camera, and lit their career on fire.
“F—— Donald Trump and f—— the Kennedy Center,” a naked Forsyth, an associate artistic lead at the Washington National Opera’s Opera Institute, which is run by the Kennedy Center, said in a video that went viral. The board of the nation’s leading cultural institution had elected Trump just weeks prior as its chairman after he gutted the board of members appointed by his predecessor, President Joe Biden.
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
Maryland
Md. schools plan to comply with federal DEI demands
Superintendents opt for cooperation over confrontation

By LIZ BOWIE | Deciding not to pick a fight with the Trump administration, Maryland school leaders plan to sign a letter to the U.S. Department of Education that says their school districts are complying with all civil rights laws.
The two-paragraph letter could deflect a confrontation over whether the state’s public schools run diversity, equity, and inclusion programs that the Trump administration has called illegal. The Baltimore Banner reviewed the letter, which was shared by a school administrator who declined to be identified because the letter has not yet been sent.
Maryland school leaders are taking a more conciliatory approach than those in some other states. Education leaders in Minnesota, New York, Colorado, Oregon, Vermont, and Wisconsin said they will not comply with the federal education department’s order, the demands of which, they say, are based on a warped interpretation of civil rights law.
The rest of this article can be found on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
Maryland
FreeState Justice: Transgender activist ‘hijacked’ Moore’s Transgender Day of Visibility event
Maryland Commission on LGBTQIA+ Affairs describes Lee Blinder’s comments as ‘call to action’

FreeState Justice on April 11 released a statement criticizing the way that Trans Maryland Executive Director Lee Blinder treated Gov. Wes Moore during a Transgender Day of Visibility event.
FreeState Justice was extremely disappointed with the criticisms of Moore on the Transgender Day of Visibility, saying it was “hijacked by public hostility” by Blinder. The Baltimore Banner reported how Blinder “laid out how the Democratic governor has let down transgender Marylanders by not putting money in the budget and not backing needed policy changes.”
The Washington Blade interviewed Blinder after the March 31 event.
“The intention of what I shared is to show to the governor that this is a community in distress. You know, we are in a real state of emergency for the trans community and there are very few opportunities that the community has to share this directly with the governor.” Blinder told the Blade. “We’re really grateful to the governor for everything that he’s done in the past for this community, but the circumstances have changed and we really need to see very specific actions taken in order to ensure this community has the ability to exist in public space.”
FreeState Justice said Moore did not deserve such criticisms during the event and added in a Blade oped it is “time for new leadership on the Maryland LGBTQIA+ Commission. Leadership that values and prioritizes coalition over conflict. Leadership that invites feedback and shares power. Leadership that understands how Annapolis operates, how budgets are constructed, and how community victories are won.”
“We’re not saying don’t challenge power. We’re saying do it with purpose. Do it with facts. Do it with a strategy. If you’re going to call yourself a leader in this movement, show us the policy platform. Show us the data. Show us the budget line. Show us the work,” wrote FreeState Justice.
The Maryland Commission on LGBTQIA+ Affairs has met to address FreeState Justice’s statements.
“During the Transgender Day of Visibility ceremony at the State House, the commission’s chair offered remarks reflecting the real fears, concerns, and hopes of the trans community. These remarks were not a call-out, but a call to action,” the commission said in their call to action statement it sent to the Blade. “The chair’s words echoed the thousands of voices we’ve heard across the state through phone calls, emails, and messages on social media to our staff, commissioners, and their affiliated organizations.”
The statement outlines what the call to action entails, addressing what the commission found to be the most pressing issues for transgender Marylanders. They include a lack of dedicated funding, barriers to affirming healthcare, housing insecurity and homelessness, discrimination in education and employment, and escalating violence, harassment, and hate.
“We remain deeply committed to working in partnership with the Moore-Miller administration, the General Assembly, state agencies, nonprofit organizations, and community partners to ensure LGBTQIA+ Marylanders are seen, protected, and supported in policy, budget, and in practice,” reads the statement.
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