A gay former student is suing the Kenosha Unified School District in Wisconsin, claiming the district failed to protect him from bullying across multiple schools.
According to the federal civil rights lawsuit, which was filed last week, Guadalupe Paredes, 19, said the bullying began in third grade, in 2007, before he knew he was gay and it continued throughout his time in the school district. The bullying allegedly became so severe that, in 11th grade, Paredes decided to drop out of school. During the previous school year, Paredes went to a hospital for inpatient psychiatric treatment. On Sunday nights, he would routinely throw up because he was so nervous about returning to school, the lawsuit states.
The harassment included anti-gay slurs, physical contact, and students telling him through social media and in person that he should die by suicide. Paredes claims that an administrator told his mother that he was to blame for the harassment by being openly gay. In another situation, he was directed not to complain to an assistant principal about the bullying because it would make the assistant principal uncomfortable. On another occasion, Paredes was told that he and one of the students who harassed him should work on a project together and that, if he said no, he’d be suspended for three days. Paredes chose the suspension.
“We’ve got a stack of records from KUSD and there’s no evidence that there was ever any investigations into any of these complaints,” one of Paredes’ lawyers, Rock Pledl, told Wisconsin Public Radio.
This isn’t the first time Kenosha Unified School District has faced a federal lawsuit over its treatment of students in the LGBTQ community. Ash Whitaker, a transgender student, filed a lawsuit against Kenosha Unified School District in 2016, claiming that the school was illegally discriminating against him by not allowing him to use the boys restrooms.
Whitaker was called by his birth name and referred to with female pronouns by school staff. He wasn’t allowed to run for prom king until media began reporting on the school’s decision. Whitaker was also forbidden from lodging with boys during school trips and security guards were told to ensure he didn’t use the boys restroom. The single-stall bathroom he was instructed to use was far from his classes and led to his stigmatization at the school, he said. The school also considered requiring him to wear a green wristband so that he could easily be identified, but officials never took that step.
In June 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit sided with Whitaker and said the district violated Whitaker’s Title IX protections on the basis of sex by refusing to accommodate his gender identity. In January, the Kenosha Unified School Board voted to drop its appeal and pay a settlement of $800,000.
Students in the LGBTQ community face endless barriers to accessing a safe and supportive school environment. The Gay Lesbian Student Education Network (GLSEN)’s national survey found that 75 percent of transgender young people feel unsafe at school. Students in the LGBTQ community in general struggle to avoid bullying, harassment, and physical intimidation in school. Thirty-three percent of LGBTQ students were physically harassed in the past year because of sexual orientation and 23 percent were physically harassed being of their gender expression, a 2014 GLSEN survey found.
Teachers in the LGBTQ community also struggle to find an inclusive school environment. Often, when LGBTQ teachers try to reach out to students and show them that they’re not alone, they find themselves penalized by administrators and in some cases, are bullied by students themselves.