A Texas teacher who reportedly would not agree to call a 6-year-old girl by her transgender boy's name has filed a federal discrimination complaint against the daycare center that fired her for the refusal.
Madeline Kirksey filed the a wrongful termination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission after she was fired from the Children's Lighthouse Learning Center in
Katy, Texas, on Nov. 3, the Houston Chronicle reported.
Kirkey, a manager at the daycare, and another employee were reportedly fired after they voiced concern when the child's parents brought her to school with shorter hair and instructed them to start calling her a male name.
Kirksey reportedly said she thought that all parents with children enrolled at the Lighthouse Learning Center should be notified of the change regarding the 6-year-old student. After that, she was terminated, according to a the document provided to the Chronicle by the educator's attorneys.
The firing happened the same day Houston voters repealed the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance which would have — among other things —allowed trandgender people to use whichever restrooms they prefer.
"I don't think we should be talking to other people's children who are under the age of 18 about being transgender,"
Kirksey told KRIV-TV last week after she was fired.
But Kirksey thinks there was more to her termination.
"When requested by parent and management to call a transgender child by the child's new name, Madeline does not follow instructions," a sentence in the termination letter stated, according to KRIV-TV.
"I said, 'This is what this whole thing [firing] is about?' So she said, 'We'll scratch that off,' and that's when she scratched off the line about the transgender child and wrote her initials by it," Kirksey told the television station.
Attorney Andy Taylor, who worked on fighting Houston city government over the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance, said he will challenge the firing of Kirksey and fellow worker Akesha Wyatt.
"This case involves a little 6-year-old girl who has been attending a private school in Katy, Texas, for the last four months as a little girl," Taylor said at a news conference. "She has parents who are a same-sex couple, two men, who decided that she was transgender."
"On Friday, that little girl left school. I'm not going to use names, but [she was] known to everybody as 'Sally,' and on Monday, this little girl returns to school calling herself 'Johnny,'" Taylor continued.
Children's Lighthouse Learning Center spokesman Jamie Izaks told the Houston Chronicle that Kirksey was not terminated over the transgender student incident but for other unspecified issues.
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