Just For Being Different

Danielle Powell (right) and her spouse Michelle Rogers...

Danielle Powell was close to getting her bachelor's degree when she was kicked out of her university for being gay in 2012, and now says the only way the school will transfer her credits to another school is if she agrees to pay $6,300. In response, Powell has launched an online petition to pressure the school to forgive the debt.

Powell was a student at Grace University in early 2011 when she began her first same-sex relationship. Up until that point, neither she nor her then-girlfriend identified as lesbian. When Grace, a religious university in Omaha, Neb., found out about the relationship through a spiritual adviser at the school, they brought Powell before a judiciary board to decide whether she should be allowed to stay enrolled.

Michael James, executive vice president at Grace, said that the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act prevents them from discussing any student's particular case. But he did confirm the student handbook states that "Any student involved in sexually immoral behavior, including premarital sex, adultery, and homosexual acts, is at minimum placed on University probation and may be subject to a Judiciary Hearing."

Powell said the board asked her why she did what she did and whether she was remorseful, treating her, in her words, "like a sexual predator." The university ultimately decided in March 2011 to suspend her and not allow her to finish the semester. Powell said she was also told she now owed Grace just over $6,000 after an academic scholarship she'd been awarded was revoked.     Read more:     

Coy Mathis

A Colorado civil rights panel has ruled that a suburban Colorado Springs school district likely discriminated against a 6-year-old transgender girl when it prevented her from using the girls' bathroom at her elementary school.

Coy Mathis's family raised the issue after school officials said the first-grader could use restrooms in either the teachers' lounge or in the nurse's office, but not the girl's bathroom at Eagleside Elementary School in Fountain.

Kathryn and Jeremy Mathis have said the district's decision would end up stigmatizing their daughter, who they said had come out of her shell when they began to allow her to live as a girl, instead of a boy.

The Colorado Division of Civil Rights found probable cause of discrimination in a letter dated June 18. The New York-based Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund announced the ruling in favor of Coy on Sunday.

Since they filed their complaint, the Mathises have moved to the Denver suburb of Aurora, and Coy was homeschooled. It wasn't immediately clear whether the family would enroll her in the new district.

Fountain-Fort Carson School District 8 has declined to discuss the case. The district, however, can seek arbitration or a public trial, said Cory Everett-Lozano, a spokeswoman with the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies.

The Mathis' attorney, Michael Silverman, said it wouldn't make any sense for the school district to fight the ruling since Coy and her family are no longer in the district. "Our hope is that the case ends here," Silverman said.

School districts in many states, including Colorado, allow transgender students to use the bathroom of the gender with which they identify. Sixteen states, including Colorado, have anti-discrimination laws that include transgender people.   Read more: