Parents of 8-year-old transgender girl claim her school forced her to wear a boy's uniform

The latest headlines from our reporters across the US sent straight to your inbox each weekday

Your briefing on the latest headlines from across the US

Please enter a valid email address

Please enter a valid email address

SIGN UP

I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice

The parents of an eight-year-old transgender girl have sued her private school, claiming administrators forced her to wear a boy's uniform and refused to call her by her chosen name.

Priya Shah and Jaspret Brar say their daughter, Nikki, has identified as a girl since a young age – despite being labelled as male at birth. Nikki wears her hair long, prefers female pronouns, and says boys' clothing “feels like a prison”.

But when her parents attempted to address this with her private California school, they say, administrators rebuffed them.

“[The school] refused to use the name, pronoun, and gender corresponding to Nikki’s gender identity, required Nikki to wear the boys' uniform and use the boys' restroom, and failed to address the bullying that Nikki was subjected to because of her gender identity and gender expression,” the parents claim.

Mr Brar and Ms Shah are now suing Heritage Oak Private Education for violating the California Unruh Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on gender identity and gender expression. They also accuse the school of using false advertising, and engaging in “reckless disregard” for their daughter’s emotional distress.

Nikki's parents claim that she began to withdraw from school activities after she was barred from wearing her preferred clothing. Her classmates also allegedly began to tease her, calling her a “loser” and saying: “You just don’t know you’re a boy.”

After a particularly distressing incident, her parents say, Nikki mentioned killing herself. They withdrew her from school shortly thereafter.

In a statement to The Independent, Heritage Oak spokeswoman Kerry Owens said: “We strive to meet the needs and wellbeing of all children in our schools, and have been able to accommodate the needs of other transgender students in older grades at Nobel Learning Community schools without incident.”

Ms Owens said the school had elected to respond “not hastily, but with deliberate care” to the family’s request. It told the family it would hire an outside consultant to assist them, and would allow Nikki to alter her uniform and hairstyle in the interim.

“We were mindful in this instance of the need to support not just this seven-year-old, but other young children,” Ms Owens said.

Mr Brar and Ms Shah, meanwhile, said they would never have chosen Heritage Oak if they knew it would not be accepting of their child's identity. They claim the school presented itself – in enrolment materials and in orientation programmes – as welcoming of diversity.

Heritage Oak, located in the wealthy suburbs of Orange County, claims to be a “positive, safe, nurturing” space for elementary and middle school students.

On its website, the school promises to provide a “warm, nurturing environment which promotes student responsibility, cooperation, high-level thinking, creativity and the respect for individual differences”.

Such claims, the Shah-Brar family says, “present a threat to members of the general public seeking nondiscriminatory educational services”.

The case, which was filed in Orange County Superior Court on Wednesday, is noteworthy because of its claims against a private business.

Previous cases filed by transgender students have largely involved public schools and their violations of civil rights laws. Such claims are usually addressed by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR).

Transgender high school student Gavin Grimm, for example, filed a federal civil rights case against his public school when he was barred from using the men’s bathroom. In a 2015 opinion on that suit, the OCR wrote that schools “must treat transgender students consistent with their gender identity”. The suit is still making its way through the courts.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, has been rolling back Obama-era protections for transgender students.

In February, the administration rescinded federal guidelines instructing schools to allow students to use the bathroom corresponding with their gender identities. Last month, the Department of Education told its lawyers they could feel free to dismiss complaints related to bathroom access.

“In OCR, processing times have skyrocketed in recent years, and the case backlog has exploded,” a spokeswoman for the Education Department said at the time. “Justice delayed is justice denied, and justice for many complainants has been denied for too long.”