The mother of a transgender Mississippi high-school student is accusing the Harrison County School District of enforcing a dress code that discriminates against girls—particularly transgender girls—and gender non-conforming students. The parent, Kimberly Hudson, filed an administrative complaint against the district in the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights on Wednesday.
The complaint says junior A.H., referred to by only her initials for her privacy, wanted to wear a black dress to her band concert on March 28, 2024, which aligned with the formal dress code for the performance for girls. Her band director gave her permission to wear the dress, which the complaint says she happily wore to school on the day of the concert, receiving many compliments from her peers.
But when A.H. went to the bathroom during her first-period class, Principal Kelly Fuller stopped the young trans girl, saying her dress violated the dress code and that she needed to change clothes because “boys can’t wear skirts or dresses,” the complaint says. The complaint alleges that Kelly said that if she did not change clothes, he would send her to in-school reassignment and she would miss the concert. A.H.’s mother quickly brought her a pair of slacks and a button-down shirt so A.H. could perform in the concert, the complaint says.
“Returning to the classroom where her dress had been celebrated by her peers, A.H. felt utterly humiliated to be seen in clothing that was inconsistent with her gender identity,” the complaint says.
The complaint says A.H. has also faced judgment for which bathroom she uses and that the school district told her to use the teachers’ single-stall bathroom, which makes her feel isolated, it says in the complaint. The 16-year-old has faced harassment for being transgender and has been called transphobic and homophobic slurs while attending school in the district, the complaint says.
The complaint alleges that, after a student repeatedly harassed her in the classroom one day, A.H. yelled at the student to stop. The teacher sent her to the vice principal, and the next day, the school suspended A.H. for two days for “disrupting the learning environment,” the complaint continues.
“In addition to the recent discriminatory dress-code enforcement she has experienced, the District’s perpetuation of and failure to respond promptly and equitably to these incidents of grave sex-based harassment have made A.H. feel unsafe and unwelcome at school,” the complaint says.
The school district did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
What Is A Civil-Rights Complaint?
The American Civil Liberties Union is representing A.H.’s mother in the complaint. Instead of filing a lawsuit against the Harrison County School District, the ACLU filed a complaint in the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights that requests the office conduct an investigation into the district that focuses on “sex discrimination that violates Title IX.”
The mother says in the complaint that the office should ensure that the district is not discriminating against students based on their sex by changing the language in the sex-specific dress code to remove sex distinctions and gendered language as well as stop enforcing dress codes that unfairly target girls, specifically transgender girls and gender non-conforming students. The complaint also asks that the school district apologize to A.H. and other students they have caused harm to based on sex.
Since Kimberly Hudson filed a civil-rights complaint instead of a lawsuit, a judge will not rule on the case and Hudson will not receive any financial compensation if the Office of Civil Rights settles the complaint in her favor. Instead, the Office of Civil Rights would inform the school district of its wrongdoings and set procedures for how the district could change its policies if the office found them to be discriminatory.
“They can investigate and identify (whether) they think a federal violation has occurred, in our instance it’s a Title IX violation,” staff attorney for the LGBTQ Justice Project at the ACLU of Mississippi McKenna Raney Gray told the Mississippi Free Press on May 14.
Based on Biological Sex
In May 2023, Harrison Central High School refused to allow a transgender girl to attend her graduation unless she wore male attire underneath her robes. The student, identified in court documents at the time only as “L.B.,” skipped her graduation after a federal judge appointed by former President Donald J. Trump ruled that the school had the right to force her to wear male attire.
In summer 2023, the complaint says the district changed the dress code for the 2023-2024 school year to add that students must dress based on their “biological sex.” Before then, the term “biological sex” did not exist in the policy, McKenna Raney-Gray said.
“I think it shows the fact that they’ve added it now that it was not a problem before now,” the ACLU staff attorney said. “It’s not like sex-based dress codes were an issue in the school district until lately, until they decided to make it an issue. And the fact that they’ve added biological sex means that they are specifically targeting transgender girls.”
The complaint outlines how it alleges the district has enforced a “discriminatory sex-specific dress code” that harms girls, especially transgender girls and gender nonconforming students. Raney-Gray said the district does not frequently target trangender boys who wear pants and button-up shirts or other masculine clothes in the same way it targets transgender girls who wear feminine clothes.
The complaint says the sex-based dress-code bans clothing typically associated with girls, like “halter-tops” and “strapless (tube-type) dresses and tops,” along with enacting a length requirement for shirts, shorts, skirts and dresses.
The district has banned transgender girls from wearing dresses to school events, including graduation, the complaint says. During the 2022-2023 school year, the complaint noted that the district stopped Student B, referring to “L.B.”, from participating in the May 20, 2023, graduation ceremony because she intended to wear feminine clothes that align with her gender identity.
The complaint notes that L.B. had been expressing herself as a girl for the entirety of her high-school career, but that Superintendent Dan King misgendered her and said she was a boy wearing a dress. The student missed her graduation because she did not want to perpetuate the district’s belief that students should dress based on their biological sex, the complaint says.
“It is particularly (transgender) girls in dresses and skirts and blouses that they are trying to prohibit in schools,” Raney-Gray said.
The complaint also says the district would exclude girls’ senior portraits from the yearbook if they wore a tuxedo. An 18-year-old high school senior who is a cisgender woman who identifies as gay has worn masculine clothes at Harrison County High School since ninth grade. She wanted to express herself by wearing a tuxedo for her senior portrait in fall 2023, but the school photographer said her picture would not be in the yearbook unless she wore the drape designated for girls.
The student wore the tuxedo anyway, and her mother asked the Harrison County School Board to put her daughter’s photo in the yearbook. Superintendent King denied her request and sided with the district’s policy that girls must wear a drape for their senior portrait. The girl’s mother wanted her daughter to be included in the yearbook in some way, so she bought a senior ad in the yearbook to place a photo of her daughter wearing her tuxedo. The complaint says Principal Kelly Fuller had to approve the ad before releasing the yearbook, but the student has not heard anything back, nor had she received a yearbook as of May 2024.
“This experience has been very upsetting and distressing for Student A, who has dressed in masculine clothing without issue on every other occasion, including wearing a tuxedo to prom in March 2024 without incident,” the complaint says.
Moments before walking on stage to accept her diploma on May 20, 2023, the district removed a girl from graduation because she was wearing pants, the complaint alleges. The district told her to remove her pants or else she could not walk—meaning that the district would rather she walk in her underwear than in pants.
WLOX reported last year that Harrison Central High School officials pulled Jai Dallas, a cisgender girl, from the lineup moments before she would have received her diploma because she was wearing slacks.
“She tells her that she can take her pants off and walk the stage, but she needed white shoes. So, she could walk in her underwear, but she can’t walk in pants. This is something that she achieved, you know, that she worked hard for,” the student’s mother, Caren Dallas, told WLOX last year.
“The District’s sex-specific dress code policies and biased enforcement lead to such invasive and inappropriate results as this: a girl must choose between wearing no pants at all or losing her opportunity to walk in a once-in-a-lifetime high school graduation mere moments before receiving her diploma,” Wednesday’s complaint says.
Unfairly Targeting Girls
The complaint also alleges that the West Wortham Elementary and Middle School principal frequently conducted dress-code checks for girls, often resulting in disciplinary action without the parents’ knowledge. Superintendent Dan King told district principals to find students who are likely to violate the dress code after he saw “a young man wearing a dress,” the complaint alleges.
The complaint claims that the district actively participates in discriminating against LGBTQ+ students and fails to discipline people who harass them.
By dedicating time and resources to unfair dress-code policies, students, particularly girls, feel ashamed and embarrassed for being excluded from participating in school-sponsored events and losing valuable instruction time in the classroom.
“It’s completely longstanding that girls’ bodies are targeted as more salacious or more distracting—that they have to cover up so that other people aren’t distracted. … A lot of school dress codes will specifically have female-coded outfits that are prohibited in schools,” McKenna Raney-Gray said.
The Mississippi Free Press left a message with the Harrison County School District to ask for a comment from Superintendent King but did not hear back by press time.
