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Jessica Norton, the mother of a trans student who briefly played on the Monarch High School volleyball team, spoke during a public comment period at a Broward County School Board meeting on Tuesday.
A mother being fired from a Florida school for enrolling her trans daughter in girls sports has spoken out in public for the first time.
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Jessica Norton, the mother of a trans student who briefly played on the Monarch High School volleyball team, spoke during a public comment period at a Broward County School Board meeting on Tuesday.
“School administration claims to care about all students but they don't care about my child,” Norton said. All of them should be embarrassed that they’re in charge of the lives of children seeing as they had no problem destroying the life of my daughter.
The school district announced earlier this month it would punish school district officials involved with Norton’s daughter being allowed to play sports with her peers. That included firing Norton as an information specialist at Coconut Creek High School, a different school from where her daughter played volleyball on the girls’ team.
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2021 (on the first day of Pride month) signed a ban on transgender girls from playing in scholastic female sports. Years later, Daniel Foganholi, a Broward County School Board member appointed by DeSantis reported to the district that Norton’s daughter was playing on the volleyball team, an apparent violation of that law.
Norton previously sued the state, challenging the constitutionality of Florida’s so-called Fairness in Women’s Sports Act. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, but left open the possibility of another lawsuit that revised arguments invoking Title IX issues and rights protections, according to CBS News. She said the school district has ruined her daughter’s high school experience through its enforcement of the controversial law.
“My daughter was flourishing at Monarch, I saw the light in her eyes gleam with future plans of organizing and attending prom, participating and leading senior class traditions and speaking at graduation—203 days ago, I watched as that light was extinguished,” she said at the meeting, referring to when her daughter was first informed of the investigation. “She walked out of the front door of the school, distraught, never to be heard from again—203 days later, no one cared.
“School administration claims to care about all students but they don't care about my child. All of them should be embarrassed that they’re in charge of the lives of children seeing as they had no problem destroying the life of my daughter. But you know what, it’s alright if I’m the villain in their story because I am the hero in my daughter's story.”
Notably, Norton is the only Broward School District employee who faces losing employment over the investigation. Administrators and faculty at Monarch High were reassigned to other positions. She was set to challenge her termination at the meeting Monday, though the item considering that issue was taken off the agenda. The Human Rights Campaign is helping Norton with her legal challenge.
“The basic principles of due process demand notice and an opportunity to be heard. Ms. Norton has never even been told what conduct she engaged in or failed to engage in that would justify an investigation in the first place,” said Jason Starr, Human Rights Campaign Litigation Strategist.
“Since the launch of the investigation, Ms. Norton, unlike the District, has acted in good faith. Their lack of clear communication, shifting expectations and failure to provide Ms. Norton a clear statement of the facts supporting her termination constitutes a denial of her due process rights and, frankly, suggests that this entire process is working toward a predetermined outcome.”
Norton said at the meeting she learned only through media accounts that district counsel was exploring alternatives to firing her.
“I had to find out in a Sun-Sentinel news article that the Professional Standards Committee recommended that I be suspended for 10-days rather than terminated – but I have been in limbo for more than 200 with the hanging threat of termination,” she said. “I found out, again in a Sun-Sentinel news article on Friday evening, that my termination had been removed from consideration at this Board meeting. The District has yet to notify me or my attorneys of that decision, why it was made, or what will happen next.”
