A transgender woman from Norfolk, Virginia, has filed a civil suit against the high school she once attended, Lake Taylor High School, and its principal, Latesha Wade-Jenkins, for failing to protect her from violent bullying when she was a student.
In Blount v. Norfolk City School Board et al, filed May 27, Blount alleges that she suffered bullying at the hands of her peers after she began transitioning in early 2022. Her peers, she says, made hurtful comments about her body, maliciously misgendered her, and even sexually assaulted her by groping her chest in the hallways. Blount’s mother reported the harassment to Principal Wade-Jenkins, the complaint says, but she was told that there was nothing the school could do. The principal acknowledged that multiple students were facing harassment, just like Blount, but refused to provide an adult to safeguard them between classes.
Wade-Jenkins suggested, instead, that Blount transfer to a different school.
In October 2022, Blount was violently assaulted by her peers, who made derogatory remarks about her gender as they attacked her. According to Blount, she was knocked unconscious and beaten while she was on the ground, kicked in the head and the chest multiple times. Blount spent the night in the emergency room, and medical testing determined that she suffered permanent brain injury, in addition to many other injuries.
Two purported facts stand out about the assault. First, school officials did not seek medical treatment for Blount after her assault. Second, despite the fact that a student posted about the planned assault on social media days before it happened, and Wade-Jenkins receiving a direct warning from Blount’s mother about the attackers’ intent, no steps were taken to protect Blount.
Blount’s lawyer, Carteia Basnight, argues that her transgender identity is a result of a medical diagnosis, gender dysphoria, and that the 2022 Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals opinion in Williams v. Kincaid states that gender dysphoria may qualify as a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act. As a result, Blount and her attorney believes that Wade-Jenkins and the Norfolk Public Schools board violated laws that require public schools to make reasonable accommodations for disabled students.
This sort of violent bullying is not novel in the American education system, but the climate of hatred and disgust at trans Americans fomented by the federal government has almost certainly made the situation worse. Blount’s assault and her school system’s gross negligence instantly brought to mind Nex Benedict, a trans teen from Oklahoma who was assaulted at school on February 7, 2024, and died the next day.
As in Blount’s case, Benedict’s family alleges (in a federal lawsuit against Owasso Public Schools) that school officials failed to act on years of reports detailing bullying and violence. A report from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, back when they employed competent lawyers who cared about Americans’ civil liberties, concluded that the school district often handled reports of student sexual harassment “informally and inadequately.”
I think a lot of people who suffered through an American public school could tell you stories a lot like Blount and Benedict’s. I went to a school not dissimilar to Lake Taylor and Owasso, where I experienced a tremendous amount of bullying for the many ways in which I was an atypical kid. This was in the 2000s, mind you, when the existence of trans people was not so widely publicized. I had no idea why I felt “wrong,” but everybody else seemed to sense it, and I got into plenty of fights, both with my peers and the school system writ large.
The sort of negligence and abdication of duty that leads to the permanent injury of Tatiana Blount and the death of Nex Benedict is unacceptable. Trans youth experience a dramatically higher risk of abuse, bullying and sexual violence than their peers, and must be protected. It is the responsibility of school officials like Latesha Wade-Jenkins to ensure that when kids show up to receive an education, they aren’t being tortured and violently attacked by their classmates. There can be absolutely no substantial argument against this fact.
I sincerely hope that Tatiana Blount wins her case against Wade-Jenkins and her former school system, but the larger issue remains: authority figures in American schools must do more in defense of vulnerable trans youth, because I am sick to death of seeing our kids suffer.
Aly Gibbs (She/They) is a trans writer who reports on news important to the queer community.
