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“The only child that was harmed in this entire investigation was my own child,” Jessica Norton said of her daughter's ban from playing girl's volleyball — a sport her daughter had played for years.
When Jessica Norton became “team mom” for her daughter’s volleyball team, she never expected it might cost her job. She certainly didn’t anticipate becoming the face of a national controversy about transgender children’s place on the athletic field.
But that changed when the Broward County School Boardannounced disciplinary action against administrators at Monarch High School and against Norton, who worked as an information management specialist at the school. District officials said the school and Norton personally had violatedFlorida’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act.
“I’ve been through the wringer as far as this investigation,” Norton said in an exclusive interview with The Advocate. “That day, I was told that the investigation was going to be 100 percent confidential and that nobody would know what was going on unless I told them. I left [my daughter] at school because they promised me she would be safe. Within two or three hours of me being home, it was on the news, along with my name and the other people involved. The school board did a press conference with the superintendent, and you know, it was on every news outlet in South Florida and apparently everywhere else.”
Norton went on to fight punishment from her employer. As things stand now, she has been removed from her current position and was suspended for 10 days but will keep her long-term employment with the school district.
But her daughter, whose name is being withheld out of respect for the child’s privacy, transferred from Monarch and is now enrolled with Florida Virtual School, taking all classes remotely.
While Norton shielded her daughter from the media spotlight and tried to avoid much of it herself, the girl’s gender identity was never a secret to teammates or coaches. In fact, the family filed a federal lawsuit challenging Florida’s sports ban, a law Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed in 2021 (on thefirst day of Pride Month).
The state remains at odds legally with President Joe Biden’s administration, which announced federal rules protecting transgender students from discrimination. A federal appellate court last week said Floridacould enforce its trans sports ban other anti-LGBTQ+ policies for the time being.
But the manner in which Florida’s law has been enforced against Norton’s family and school alarms Norton’s attorney Jason Starr, director of litigation for theHuman Rights Campaign.
“This investigation was placed on a track that's normally reserved for criminal conduct or very serious alleged violations of harm to students,” Starr said. “Essentially, these are police officers. They call Ms. Norton into the office. They have guns. They have badges. It had the imprimatur of a criminal investigation.”
It wasn’t until early August, more than seven months after the investigation’s launch, that the district identified a specific policy Norton had violated. The superintendent’s office alleged Norton submitted paperwork to the Florida High School Athletic Association listing her daughter’s sex as female, as it appears on her legal birth certificate and all school forms. Relevant to Norton’s legal challenge to retribution at work, she submitted those documents as the child’s parent, not through her administrative position at Monarch High.
To Norton’s and Starr’s knowledge, no student to date ever claimed to be affected negatively by the student’s participation in sports. “There was no harm to any children,” Norton said. “The only child that was harmed in this entire investigation was my own child.”
No teammate raised concerns about sharing a locker room with a trans student, and no competitor claimed the girl brought any type of unfair advantage to the volleyball court.
“There's a lot of evidence that her daughter's teammates appreciated her on the team. They wanted her to be a member,” Starr said. “All we know is that a board member, a school board member who was appointed by Gov. DeSantis, claimed to receive an anonymous tip that he called in to the district, which launched the investigation.”
That board member was Dan Foganholi, who filled a seat after DeSantis suspended several Broward County School Board members and appointed a majority Republican board in Florida’s most Democratic county. Foganholi notably lost election to a four-year term in a nonpartisan election August 20, but DeSantis days laterappointed him to the Florida Board of Education instead.
Whatever Foghanholi’s future may be, the lives of the Norton family have been thrown off track. And whether Norton wants the attention, she has become the face of a culture war gripping much of the nation.
This all feels like an expected course for Norton, who knew little about transgender identity before becoming a parent. That changed after her child, starting at a young age, wanted to grow long hair and insisted on being called a girl. Until the child was in first grade, Norton believed the behavior to be a phase or perhaps an early sign of homosexuality.
“I didn't even know what I was dealing with,” Norton said. “You know, I thought I just had a gay son. And then it got to the point where it was harder and harder to stop her from telling me — and I never stopped her from telling me — but she would always tell me that she was a girl, and when she grew up, she wanted to be a mommy. Things like that. You know, you explain to little children, no, that's not how this works. You’re not a girl. And then she would just fight, and then she would argue with, like, preschool teachers”
Then the story about another South Florida trans child helped Norton understand her own kid.
“One day I was watchingI Am Jazz, and Jeanette [Jennings] said, ‘The thing with transgender children is that they're insistent, consistent, and persistent that they are the other gender.’ And I just remember sitting on the couch thinking, Oh, my God. my child is transgender," Norton said, “which is ironic, because a few years prior to that, when I had come across Jazz [Jennings] when she was on Barbara Walters, I remember sitting on the couch watching that entire interview thinking, This is weird. I was, you know, interested in what was going on, but I just thought it was very strange.”
The revelation proved to be life-changing as Norton became an advocate for her own child. When her daughter took an interest in soccer, the girl’s favorite sport in middle school, she braced for the fight for the student athlete to share a jersey with female teammates.
“If she can't play these sports, like, what is she gonna do?” Norton said. “This is her life. This is her socialization and her friendships revolve around sports. I remember my sister-in-law saying, ‘Don't worry about it, everything's gonna be fine.’ And then they passed the law.”
Since then, she challenged the trans sports ban in court. She also opposes Florida’s ban on trans health care for children, though her own child’s access was not blocked because she was already on puberty blockers and a health care regimen before the law passed.
Norton feels the law in Florida was passed based on ignorance. She challenges any notion that her daughter ever enjoyed a competitive edge. Indeed, she thinks putting her on the field with male athletes would pose a danger.
“It wasn't fair that she would now have to either not play sports or play sports with males that have gone through male puberty,” Norton said. “She has never gone through male puberty. She has been on hormone blockers and has been on estrogen. So as far as that goes, I didn't feel it was fair that an already marginalized group of children were going to be even more under attack by this this law. I felt like I had a duty to my own child to protect her and fight against this law.”
Last November, the Nortons’ case challenging the ban was dismissed in federal court, but Starr stressed that was because of lack of clarity over which government should be sued. A judge left room for plaintiffs to amend pleadings, which attorneys continue to review. “The case is still active and alive,” he said.
All that said, the case shows Norton knew the law when she signed her daughter up for volleyball, knowing state statute barred her from the field. Was it an act of civil disobedience? Was the scofflaw act of trying out for the high school team inviting legal retribution that required attention from the justice system?
Starr stressed that Florida’s law actually lacks clear direction on enforcement. No civil action had ever been filed against Norton or the high school to stop her daughter from participating in sports.
But Norton said her decision had less to do with taking a stand in court and more with ensuring her daughter has a positive high school experience.
“She had always played with these girls. She had always been on a school team,” Norton said. “We were never told she couldn't play on the team.”
And no one objected as the girl participated through an entire season on the team.
“It should be noted that the volleyball season was over for 2023. The volleyball season had ended weeks before this investigation was launched. But ironically or unironically, it was launched within 10 days of the judge telling us to refile the lawsuit. Volleyball season was over, and then they all of a sudden, after three years of her playing, were going to bring it to somebody's attention. To me, that sounds a little fishy.”
But unquestionably, DeSantis in the last three years has put transgender Floridians in the crosshairs of his political ambitions. In another notable timing issue, Broward County officials announced the action weeks ahead of theIowa presidential caucus, as DeSantis still vied for the Republican nomination. He ran largely as an effective culture warrior, claiming more success than any governor in America at enforcing a socially conservative agenda in a once-purple state.
All this raises the question of why Norton has stayed in Florida. While hers is not the only state with a trans sports ban, many others have approved laws actively protecting the rights of transgender children.
“Why should I have to leave? I've lived here 50 years. This is where I've lived my entire life,” Norton said. “I love the state of Florida. I love being 15 minutes from the beach. I love being a couple hours from Disney World. I shouldn't have to uproot my entire life because of this ridiculous — because of politics.
“And what goes to say if I leave here and move to another state, that that state is always going to be safe, because Florida used to be safe. It used to be a safe place for the LGBTQ population, and it's no longer one. But who's to say that if I move somewhere else, that it's not going to follow me? And who's to say that it's always going to be this way here?”
