No matter how much a boy wants to be a girl, dress like a girl, think he’s a girl, act like a girl, he will never be a girl.”

Westerly resident and Moms for Liberty member Robert Chiaradio, speaking before the Little Compton School Committee in May

I unequivocally support protections for all students and believe that everyone should feel safe attending their public schools.”

Dr. Laurie Dias-Mitchell

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story contained a mistake in a quote attributed to superintendent Dr. Laurie Dias-Mitchell. She said that the district's policy is “focused on protecting all members of the school community," not all members of the school committee.

By Ted Hayes

The Little Compton School District is peripherally involved in a federal lawsuit over whether recent changes to federal Title IX anti-discrimination laws are appropriate and have children’s best interests at heart.

Earlier this year, Georgia-based Moms for Liberty and several other organizations, The Young America’s Foundation and Female Athletes United, sued the federal government in protest of recent Title IX changes which expand protections to students of transgender orientation — those whose gender identity does not correspond with the sex registered for them at birth.

In the wake of those changes, at least 15 conservative states filed legal challenges to the law.

In July, the United State District Court District of Kansas issued an injunction preventing the Department of Education from enforcing the new regulations against the plaintiff organizations and their members. As part of that order, Moms for Liberty and the other two plaintiffs were told by the court to submit a list of schools that their members or members’ children attend. That list was released about a month ago, and includes Wilbur and McMahon Schools — one of 20 schools across Rhode Island and the only one in the East Bay and Sakonnet areas subject to the injunction.

While the federal government has appealed, no stay on that injunction has yet to be issued.

The ruling leaves Little Compton and 19 other communities across the state to decide whether they will follow the new federal regulations and face possible legal action from Moms for Liberty and the other groups, or whether to ignore them.

Currently, Superintendent Dr. Laurie Dias-Mitchell confirmed, the school department is not party to any litigation. And while she would not comment further on the litigation,  the agenda for the Wednesday, Sept. 11 school committee meeting notes that members were scheduled to meet in executive session  to discuss the Title IX issue.

According to transequality, a national organization that fights for the rights of transgender citizens, the recent federal changes submitted by the Biden administration “make it clear that the general provisions of Title IX prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex protect trans youth from harassment and discrimination in education because ... it is impossible to discriminate against a person because of their sexual orientation or gender identity without discriminating against them based on sex.”

They are also similar to those adopted by the state six years ago, when the state Department of Education began requiring all public school districts to adopt policies “focused on protecting all members of the school community,” Dias-Mitchell wrote in an e-mail to the Sakonnet Times. Part of that policy, which Little Compton established and is following, deals with protections for transgender and gender non-conforming students, and states that schools “shall be free from discrimination based on sex, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.”

The state’s regulations and the then-coming Biden administration changes were challenged earlier this year, both in Little Compton and in other towns across the state. In early May, Westerly resident Robert Chiaradio, a member of Moms for Liberty, told Little Compton School Committee members during a tour of school committee meetings across the state that the Title IX changes, and protections for transgender students, are wrong for Little Compton. He implored committee members to disregard regulations that they don’t agree with or do not feel are appropriate.

Title IX, he said, “was written to protect women from discrimination based on sex — not men who see themselves as women.”

“No matter how much a boy wants to be a girl, dress like a girl, think he’s a girl, act like a girl, he will never be a girl. This is what the district can do: Say ‘No’. You are under no obligation to comply with this Title IX hijacking.”

Chiaradio said the regulations take the vital role played by parents out of the equation, leaving important matters that should be handled at home to school districts and educators. And the regulations, he said, will “severely alter and take away your decision-making capability if you choose to let it.”

Though he closed his speech by asking school community members to take a stand against the Title IX changes, members thanked him for appearing, moved on to the next topic, and did not discuss the issue again until last week’s closed door meeting.

Over the weekend, Dias-Mitchell wrote to the Times to state that she takes student protections very seriously, and despite the recent lawsuit, the district is standing strong for its students and adhering to internal policy:

“Both the Title IX policy currently in place and the (district’s) Gender Identity and Expression Nondiscrimination policy provide protections for all students,” she wrote. “The LCSD’s Gender Identity and Expression Nondiscrimination policy was recently reviewed by RIDE — and RIDE confirmed in a letter to us that our policy not only adheres to the law and statute guidance,  but it is also an exemplar in the state.”