Seattle Public Schools authorizes legal action against transgender school sports ban

The Seattle School Board voted tonight to take legal action over the initiative just passed by voters that bans transgender athletes from participating in girls sports. School board members say they need clarity from the courts on the issue before proceeding. Fox 13's Jennifer Dowling is live now with those details. Jennifer. There are so many rules and regulations around data privacy, collecting student information, student privacy, that they want to make sure they have it correct before rushing into implementation. Meantime, supporters of the initial vote and initiative and also those who opposed it, we're discussing this tonight after the board Monday's Seattle Public School Board meeting ended in heated debate. meeting and some sparks flew. That after the board voted to approve a resolution authorizing legal action against Initiative 638, just approved by voters, which prohibits biologically male students from competing with and against female students. This motion is passed unanimously. Under the legislation, school boards would be required to create rules governing how sex would be verified. Board members say that could result in legal or financial consequences. Getting some clarity when there is some confusion will be helpful as we move forward. Amy Souza and Dawn Land from Clark and Pierce Counties protested the school board's decision. Why are they not willing to support the will of the voters now? It's very frustrating. We fought really hard to stand up for fairness for our girls. This is really about protecting and preserving the promise of Title IX. Meantime, LGBTQ activists and others responded, saying that they support the board's decision to possibly take this to court. The language as it is written could absolutely mean general examination based on the fact that it's subjecting only female students to this requirement and not male students. My understanding is that that's a huge liability. As for what's next. We need to now, of course, talk to the general counsel as well as outside counsel. The board says right now it's unclear what type of legal action will be taken. There are lots of laws in Washington around student privacy, around equal access to educational opportunities, around... around data and how that's shared around things that can be disparate treatment, particularly for boys and girls sports, and all those things are in many, many laws, and if we were to implement this as written, we think it would potentially set us up for a lawsuit for someone violating those laws. I don't think that this stops the clock anyways, but I do think looking at some of the legal action that's possible, hopefully we can maybe gain a little bit more time here. The board says it was looking for more clarity before a December 3rd deadline when they said that that law was supposed to be implemented. Reporting live in Seattle, Jennifer Dowling, FOX 13 News.