A member of the Utah State Board of Education was removed from her committee duties and asked to resign this week after questioning the gender of a high school basketball player in a Facebook post.
Board member Natalie Cline posted photos of a flyer and banner for a Salt Lake County high school basketball team on Feb. 6 with the caption “Girls’ basketball,” suggesting that one of the girls in the images, who had short hair, was not a woman. The post, which was reported by KSL TV, a television channel in Salt Lake City, has since been deleted.
The board said Wednesday that, after an investigation, it decided to censure Ms. Klein, ask for her resignation and bar her from attending board meetings for disrespecting students’ privacy, including publicly portraying them in a negative light. The Utah Legislature passed a resolution on Thursday against Ms. Klein for her “heinous actions” that led to the “relentless harassment and intimidation, including threats of violence” of a student.
The parents of the 16-year-old girl targeted in the post, Al and Rachel van der Beek, wrote in a Salt Lake Tribune column Thursday that Ms. Klein, “did exactly what we teach our kids not to do in terms of bullying, of mocking and spreading rumors and gossip about others’.
Mr. van der Beek said in an interview on Friday that Ms. Cline had exposed their daughter to a barrage of ridicule and hateful comments for the 16 hours the post was on social media. She said her comments and the reaction to them were one of the most painful things the family had endured.
He said his daughter, a leading scorer on the basketball team, had already faced bullying from other students after she decided to cut her hair, with some vocally derogatory comments directed at her while playing, including: “Get that boy out of the game.”
Ms. Klein’s comments brought the matter into the open, representing “a whole other level of abhorrence,” Mr. van der Beek said.
Ms. Klein’s behavior would have been unjustified even if it had been based on fact, which it was not, he said.
He said his daughter, after the last several basketball games, is upset and disappointed. “He came home last night and yelled, ‘I hate basketball,'” he said.
Several state legislatures have become more hostile to transgender people in recent years, passing laws focused on limiting their access to health care, bathroom access and participation in school sports. More than 425 bills focused on limiting the rights of LGBTQ people are being considered by state legislatures, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
The increased focus on transgender issues, a political and cultural flashpoint in the United States, has brought transgender people into the spotlight, with some reporting increased levels of harassment and discomfort.
In January, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, signed a bill barring transgender people from using bathrooms, showers or locker rooms that align with their gender identity, with a few exceptions. Last year, Governor Cox signed a bill that prevents minors from receiving gender transition health care, which can include puberty-blocking drugs, surgeries and other medically acceptable treatments.
In a survey of more than 92,000 trans and non-binary Americans in late 2022, nearly a third of respondents said they had been verbally harassed in the past year, and 3 percent of respondents said they had been physically assaulted in the past year because of their identity. gender.
Ms. Klein, who was elected to the board in 2020, did not respond to a request for comment early Friday. In a subsequent Facebook post on February 8, she apologized for the “negative attention” her post had attracted.
“We live in strange times where it’s normal to pause and wonder if people are who they say they are because of the push to normalize transgenderism in our society,” Ms. Klein wrote in that post. She added that the student she reported had a “larger build, like her parents.”
The Utah Board of Education apologized to the student. “No person, especially a child, should be subjected to such comments and judgments,” the council’s statement said. Ms. Klein, in a letter posted on Facebook on Wednesday, argued that the board’s investigation had been rushed and had denied her “a fair process to address complaints.”
Governor Cox signed the Utah House resolution on Thursday. “The vast majority of Utahns agree that Natalie Cline’s behavior was unacceptable,” he wrote in a statement. “I have spoken with the student’s parents and I am heartbroken for this family.”
