A two-time Teacher of the Year from Texas’ Charlotte Anderson Elementary School has been suspended from her classroom since September 2017. The reason for her suspension is also the reason she filed a discrimination lawsuit against the Mansfield Independent School District on Tuesday, and it is all the result of this image.
The Texas Tribune explains that Bailey was put on administrative leave following a complaint from a parent that the above image, which the teacher shared with her students and shows her and her wife dressed up in funny costumes, was an example of “promoting the ‘homosexual agenda.’”
Yup.
Bailey’s story has drawn outrage from the state’s LGBTQ community and disappointment from many of her students’ families, who praise her as knowledgeable and passionate. Her case has also exposed what advocates call gaping holes in the state’s employment discrimination laws, which don’t explicitly protect LGBTQ employees.
Texas law prohibits employment discrimination based on a host of factors, including sex, race, religion and disability. But there’s no express protection for gay, lesbian and transgender employees.
If that image promotes anything it’s maybe Halloween or the Pixar movies Finding Nemo and Finding Dory. The silver lining here is that while Texas’ Mansfield ISD sacrifices its students by taking a well-liked and successful teacher out of the classroom because of bigotry, they have opened themselves up to a real legal case that might be able to settle the constitutionality of Texas’s unconstitutional employment system. And it may also force the hand of legislators in the state to do something worthwhile, for once.
Twenty-two states have some sort of employment protection for LGBTQ workers, Chuck Smith said. State Rep. Eric Johnson, D-Dallas, has filed such a measure in Texas every session since 2011; in 2017, the bill narrowly passed through a House committee but never got a vote in the full chamber. Opponents told the committee at a public hearing that the bill would create a special classification for LGBTQ individuals and impose new restrictions on businesses. Johnson said he plans to raise it again next session.
"LGBTQ Texans have waited long enough," Johnson said. "If Texas had a statewide employment nondiscrimination policy in place, [Bailey] would have had clear protection under state law."
You can watch Bailey and her wife’s press conference announcing this decision below.