The court drew no distinction between accidental misuse and targeted, ongoing harassment, concluding that even that conduct does not “materially and substantially” disrupt school activities—the threshold that would allow schools to intervene. In doing so, the panel elevated what it called “biological pronouns,” a term with no prior grounding in U.S. caselaw. The decision also seems to bar transgender students from misgendering their cisgender bullies in return. The result is a newly recognized right to bully transgender students in the 6th Circuit, achieved by reframing their identities as a “political topic” rather than acknowledging the clear and harmful disruption this conduct causes.

The majority argued not only that intentional and repeated misgendering does not substantially disrupt transgender students’ classroom experience, but that prohibiting such behavior would actually harm the cisgender students engaged in it. “So forcing these individuals to choose between either violating their scientific and religious beliefs or facing punishment for adhering to those beliefs can cause ‘mental and psychological harm’ to them,” the decision reads.

The majority also carved out a special status for what it termed “biological pronouns,” a phrase it never meaningfully defines. At one point, the judges confronted the obvious implication of their logic: that if intentional misgendering is protected, a student could just as easily target a cisgender peer—for example, calling a smaller or weaker cisgender boy “she” and using she/her pronouns to mock him. To wave this away, the court claimed that such conduct would amount to “ridiculing the physical characteristics” of a cisgender student, while declining to extend the same protection to transgender students subjected to identical behavior. Under this reasoning, a cisgender student may intentionally and repeatedly misgender a transgender classmate, but the transgender student would be barred from responding in kind.