Broward County Public Schools in southern Florida on Tuesday suspended a staff member who allowed her transgender teenage daughter to play volleyball as a woman. Jessica Norton, a computer information specialist at Monarch High School who also coaches the girls' volleyball team, was suspended for violating the Florida Women's Sports Fairness Act, which was signed into law in 2021 by Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The boy, now 16, began taking puberty-suppressing drugs when he was 11. He now takes estrogen to enhance his feminine features but has not yet had surgery. Norton and his family are plaintiffs in a lawsuit seeking to block the Florida law as a violation of his son's civil rights.
Florida is one of 24 states that ban “transgender” athletes from participating in women's sports.
Decision of the Board of Education
Norton was suspended without pay for 10 days. She will now be given a position with equal pay and responsibility, although she is not a computer information specialist. The Florida High School Athletic Association fined the school $16,500 for the violations and placed it on probation.
While the fine would be heavy enough for the school, the coach also put the school at risk of legal action if any students felt they were deprived of competitive opportunities because Norton's son was allowed to play on the team.
Broward County Public Schools Superintendent Howard Hepburn asked the school board to fire Norton for the violations. However, only three school board members voted that the coach should be fired, so the board decided that suspension was the best option. One board member, Brenda Pham, angered Norton by calling the “transgender” student a boy. Pham wanted to file criminal charges against Norton, but the Women's Sports Fairness Act only provides for civil penalties.
In the end, the board voted 5-4 to reprimand him rather than fire him.
“Our employee chose not to follow the law,” said company director Debbie Hixson. “It was a first offense. We don't fire people for a first offense.”
“I haven't done anything wrong.”
“Obviously I don't want to be fired from my job, I love my job, but I don't think any suspension is right,” Norton said following the verdict.
Norton believes she has done nothing wrong, argues that because the Women's Sport Fairness Act is a civil law, only institutions, not individuals, can be held liable, and that she and her family already struggle enough.
No one can understand what we have been through. We have been through death threats, harassing phone calls, letters sent to our home, and more, all of this was because of something they did, not something I did. I was protecting my children. Again, I have done nothing wrong.
Investigators have interviewed three teammates of the children involved, who said the girls were not forced to change clothes or shower with Norton's son.
Norton has been on paid administrative leave since the incident in November, and her children, who served as student body president and homecoming princess before the incident, are now attending school online.
Norton maintains she did nothing wrong, but her family's participation in a lawsuit challenging Florida's law suggests that having her son play on the girls' volleyball team was more of a publicity stunt than anything else.
But her first mistake was allowing her son to go down the harmful path of “transgenderism.”
