The Liberty Justice Center is representing Coach John Parks in a lawsuit that accuses an Oregon school district of violating his freedom of speech and for false harassment accusations after he objected to the district’s policy on gender-confused athletes competing against girls.
(LifeSiteNews) — An Oregon high school track and field coach fired in June for proposing an alternative to pitting female athletes against gender-confused males is fighting back with a free speech lawsuit asserting his freedom of speech has been violated.
Last month, former Lake Oswego High School Coach John Parks was fired after writing two letters to Peter Weber, executive director of the Oregon Student Activities Association (OSAA), and to state Sen. Rob Wagner before and after the state championships, objecting to the inclusion of biological males in female-specific teams.
“Allowing this travesty to be carried out is making a complete mockery of the meet this weekend and in the future until the rules are altered to protect natural-born females,” he wrote, proposing instead to “encourage transgender participation is to offer an open division that is so named so it doesn’t identify or discriminate but offers an opportunity to participate,” so gender-confused students could be included without their “unfair advantage” imperiling girls’ chance at scholarships.
An OSAA executive board member filed a complaint against Parks, accusing him of “premeditated, calculated and discriminatory” behavior and against students, their families, other coaches, and a particular gender-confused athlete, whom it accuses him of encouraging audience members to boo, leading to his firing.
“I’m gonna fight now because I got wronged,” Parks responded. “I’m fighting for girls. I’m fighting for female sports. And I’m fighting that it be fair for everybody.”
Now, the Liberty Justice Center is representing Parks in a lawsuit accusing the Oregon school district of violating his freedom of speech, the Daily Caller reported, in hopes of getting his job back.
The suit calls the allegations of harassment and encouraging boos false, citing an OSSA email that admits he “didn’t violate either the Gender Identity Participation policy or Rule 3 in our Handbook,” and that the organization has “no new rules prohibiting criticism of any OSAA policy.”
“Coach Parks was retaliated against, falsely accused of discriminatory behavior, denied an appeal, and fired – just for exercising his constitutional right to free speech as a private citizen,” Liberty Justice Center senior counsel Buck Dougherty said. “We are proud to stand up for his constitutional rights through this lawsuit, and we look forward to holding the District and the Board accountable for this egregious violation of free speech and due process.”
Mandatory inclusion of gender-confused individuals in opposite-sex sports is promoted as a matter of “inclusivity,” but critics note that indulging “transgender” athletes undermines the original rational basis for having sex-specific athletics in the first place, thereby depriving female athletes of recognition and professional or academic opportunities, as well as undermining female players’ basic safety and privacy rights by forcing them to share showers and changing areas with members of the opposite sex.
There have been numerous high-profile examples in recent years of men winning women’s competitions, and research affirms that physiology gives males distinct athletic advantages that cannot be fully negated by hormone suppression.
In a 2019 paper published by the Journal of Medical Ethics, New Zealand researchers found that “healthy young men (do) not lose significant muscle mass (or power) when their circulating testosterone levels were reduced to (below International Olympic Committee guidelines) for 20 weeks,” and “indirect effects of testosterone” on factors such as bone structure, lung volume, and heart size “will not be altered by hormone therapy;” therefore, “the advantage to transwomen (biological men) afforded by the (International Olympic Committee) guidelines is an intolerable unfairness.”
Both aspects of the controversy have been highlighted by University of Pennsylvania swimmer William “Lia” Thomas, who reportedly retains male genitalia and is still attracted to women yet “identifies” as female and lesbian. Thomas quickly started dominating women’s swimming after switching from the men’s team and has caused his female teammates unrest due to sharing lockers with them. Yet the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has reportedly pressured swimmers and their parents against speaking out.
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