When Fountain, Colorado Eastside Elementary School’s principal told parents Jeremy and Kathryn Mathis that their child, Coy, had to stop using the girls’ bathroom, they sued. Coy is a six-year-old first grader, born a boy, who self-identifies as a girl.
School officials offered Coy the options of using the boys’ bathroom, the special-needs bathroom, or even the faculty unisex bathrooms. Coy complained they were farther away than the girls’ bathroom.
Coy enrolled as a boy in kindergarten, but his parents notified the school that Coy would self-identify as a girl after December 2011. The kindergarten had gender-neutral bathrooms, and Coy’s teacher explained to the class that “everybody is different and that being different isn’t bad.”
While the suit continues, all the Mathis children are currently being home-schooled.
Sources include: Melissa Barnhart, “Colo. School Sued for Banning 6-Year-Old Boy From Girls’ Bathroom,” The Christian Post, March 6, 2013
David Applegate is a Chicago-based trial lawyer and partner at the law firm of Williams Montgomery & John Ltd.
