Facing Pressure, Texas School District Lets Transgender Teen Wear Tux

Here’s to triumphing over the inane rules that often govern the typical North American high school: after not allowing a transgender student to wear a tux in his yearbook photo, a South Texas school district has reversed course, saying (thanks to pressure from the Southern Poverty Law Center) that the student can wear the tux, no problem, and ohbytheway please don’t sue us for being dicks.

According to CBS, Jeydon Loredo, who grew up female but now identifies as male, came to loggerheads with his school district about wearing a tux for his yearbook photo. The school district apparently wouldn’t let him wearing the tux because doing so would have somehow violated “community standards,” which is just an arbitrary phrase bigots use when their LEGO-animated worldview is challenged in any significant way.

The district abandoned its “community standards” once the Southern Poverty Law Center threatened to file a lawsuit if a decision about the tux photo wasn’t made by Nov. 21. An attorney for the law center, Alesdair Ittelson, said that district’s decision sends “a signal to other school districts that transgender students should be recognized as important members of their communities rather than ostracized and subjected to discrimination.”

School district Superintendent Raymundo Villarreal Jr. has done his fair share of backpedaling, saying now that Loredo’s inclusion in the yearbook, which Villarreal insists was never in jeopardy, “is in the best interest of the student and the school and the community.” Oh, and please don’t anybody be annoyed with the supposedly level-headed adult, k thanks.