OK HS Bathroom Fight Results in Lawsuit and Inflamed Coverage
Last October, two girls fought in the bathroom of Edmond Memorial High School. Now a lawsuit alleges severe injuries to the cisgender girl and seeks to hold the school responsible for not enforcing discriminatory bathroom policies.
by Evan Urquhart
Multiple right wing media outlets are repeating the allegations of a cisgender girl who fought with a trans girl in a high school bathroom this past October, as outlined in a lawsuit by the girl’s parents against the Edmond Public Schools in Oklahoma. The lawsuit alleges that the district knowingly allowed the other student to use girls' bathrooms, which is illegal under Oklahoma law. The law, signed last May by Republican Governor Kevin Stitt, requires schools to segregate bathrooms and changing areas by sex, and rely on students’ birth certificates to determine which facilities are appropriate.
According to a paywalled story in the Oklahoman, the girls gave conflicting accounts of the fight to a police officer immediately afterwards. Each claimed the other had initiated the physical conflict.
screenshot from the Oklahoman
According to the Oklahoman, the police officer reported the cisgender girl “had red areas on her face and her eyes were swelling,” and the trans girl was given a juvenile summons for assault and battery. In an unlisted YouTube video from Edmond Public Schools’ superintendent Angela Grunewald, Grunewald describes the cisgender girl’s injuries as minor. The lawsuit reportedly alleges “severe physical and mental injuries, severe physical and mental pain and suffering, and severe emotional distress” according to multiple outlets.
Right wing news accounts have focused on repeating the allegations as presented in the lawsuit in lurid fashion, particularly focusing on the claim that the cisgender girl was “severely beaten.” For example, the phrase appears in the New York Post’s headline and both the first and second paragraph of their story.
screenshot from the New York Post
The Post’s story makes no attempt to present any information about the transgender girl’s side of the story. Nor do any of the stories we read, apart from the Oklahoman’s paywalled article. This includes stories in the Daily Mail, Fox News, the local Fox affiliate, and two stories in the Washington Examiner. (The more news-focused Examiner’s story, which we linked second, is the only one we found to note that Grunewald described the cisgender girl’s injuries as minor.)
Grunewald’s video did feature heavily in most of the stories we encountered, however. Specifically, her claims the transgender student had only very recently started at EMHS when the incident occurred, and that the school was unaware she was transgender before this incident are being widely reported. It is also being widely reported that the lawsuit disputes this, claiming the cisgender girl told school officials that the other girl was trans before the fight took place, bizarrely implying that Oklahoma schools should ban students from restrooms based on reports that they are trans from other students.
If the school is found to have knowingly ignored the law they’d stand to lose a significant portion of their state funding.