A video from a cell phone that has been making the rounds on social media shows a transgender student at Alpine High School being attacked by a fellow classmate.
In the video, the classmate, who appears to be wearing a sports jersey of some kind, is seen wrestling the student to the ground and repeatedly punching him.
The victim, who spoke with the Odessa, Texas-based CBS affiliate KOSA, says the attack was unprovoked, and began after the attacker cussed at him, and then began shoving and punching him in the face while two of the attacker’s friends laughed.
“[H]e said it’s because he didn’t like me and he didn’t like who I was, that I just pissed him off,” the victim, whose name is being kept confidential for his own safety, said.
Even though the video has been viewed thousands of times, there are no consequences for the aggressor because the attack occurred off school property on a weekend.
Alpine Independent School District Superintendent Becky McCutchen says that, for those reasons, there’s nothing the district can do unless the police make an arrest.
“People need to understand this happened off campus and the school district, we’ve done everything we can to ensure the safety of all our students,” McCutchen said in defense of the school district. “And never would we condone something of that matter.”
But the victim says he’s been bullied and frequently harassed at school, even after the attack.
“I feel extremely grateful for the result of the court case. I feel blessed,” says Diana Portillo, a transgender immigrant who recently won a historic judgment relating to a discrimination and harassment lawsuit against the owner of the McDonald's franchise for which she worked. “I always had faith in God that it was going to turn out right.”
In August, Portillo was awarded $930,000 by a D.C. Superior Court jury for the discrimination she experienced due to her gender identity, as well as retaliation for complaining while employed in 2013 at a McDonald’s on Georgia Ave. in Northwest D.C.
A federal appeals court upheld an Alabama policy requiring transgender individuals to undergo gender confirmation surgery in order to change the gender marker on their driver's licenses.
In 2018, three transgender residents of Alabama sued to challenge the state's Policy Order 63, arguing that the surgical requirement violates their constitutional rights by forcing them to undergo a costly, invasive, and -- depending on their unique form of gender dysphoria -- potentially unnecessary medical procedure just to have their identities recognized as valid by the state. Currently, eight other states have similar requirements in place.
The Colorado Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit against a Christian baker who refused to create a cake celebrating a gender transition for a transgender woman on procedural grounds.
In doing so, the court sidestepped the issue of whether -- and to what extent -- a person's First Amendment rights override local nondiscrimination laws.
Lower courts in Colorado had previously ruled in favor of the woman, Autumn Scardina, finding -- based on the facts of the case -- that Jack and Debra Phillips, the owners of Masterpiece Cakeshop, in Lakewood Colorado, had discriminated against her by refusing to bake a custom-made cake only after they found out the purported significance of the cake.
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