A Michigan school district’s athletic director was reinstated on Tuesday, four months after he publicly empathized with a transgender student athlete at the center of a Title IX investigation.
Dr. Chet Hesson was placed on administrative leave in December after he spoke with LGBTQ+ news site Uncloseted Media about the athlete, a volleyball player competing for Skyline High School in Monroe County. Hesson’s school district was under investigation at the time after a local father had filed a complaint alleging that his daughter had been unfairly made to compete against an allegedly trans athlete.
Related
Hesson said in the interview, “My heart goes out to them, whether they’re trans or not, just having that much negative eyeball on you and rhetoric is like incredible — the amount of pressure that you’d feel as a 16- or 17- or 18-year-old to have to deal with that.”
The school district put Hesson on leave the very next day, claiming his media appearance was unauthorized.
Never Miss a Beat
Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights.
The student at the center of the investigation had previously been outed and deadnamed by the Fox News sports site OutKick in dozens of stories and social posts targeting her, the school district, and the Michigan lawmakers who developed the state’s inclusive athletic policy. The aforementioned father’s complaint alleged that these policies violated Title IX, a federal law prohibiting sex-based educational discrimination.
Anti-trans activist Riley Gaines reposted part of Hesson’s interview to X, saying it was “amazing to watch grown men act like calling a boy a boy is the worst atrocity a human is capable of committing.”
The Monroe Public Schools Board of Education initiated an independent investigation of the claim after the filing. Hesson’s reinstatement occurred after investigators determined that all claims against the school district were unsubstantiated and the district was not in violation of Title IX, Action News 13 reports.
Claims regarding “equal access to teams, the provision of a safe environment and the protection of student privacy and bodily integrity” were unsubstantiated, according to school district Superintendent Andrew Shaw.
The district’s decision to place Hesson on leave inspired outrage from local officials, who signed an open letter in March calling for his reinstatement.
“At their core, Dr. Hesson’s remarks expressed empathy for a young student athlete navigating unconscionable scrutiny, and demonstrated the kind of care and leadership we should expect from educators and athletic leaders entrusted with supporting students,” the letter read.
“We need more compassion in our society right now, not less,” said signatory and local county prosecutor Eli Savit. “But at the very least, we should expect school officials, of all people, to give every child grace and understanding. For a school official to empathize with a student who’s been targeted by adults isn’t objectionable. To the contrary: It’s the bare minimum we should all expect.”
For their part, Uncloseted Media, the site that published the remarks, said the uproar over his comments is an unfortunate byproduct of for-profit journalism in the current media landscape.
Reached for comment, the site’s founder and editor, Spencer Macnaughton, who interviewed Hesson, said that “it’s critical to remember why this story became national news in the first place.”
A reporter for Fox’s Outkick “relentlessly covered an allegedly trans teen girl,” he said. “He wrote 18 articles about her and published the girl’s full name and deadname. He also tweeted about the situation at least 41 times and attended at least four high school girls’ volleyball games.”
“This reporting, which was flagged as irresponsible at best by multiple media ethicists, is part of a larger trend of far-right media leveraging innocent young trans kids — often girls — for the sake of ragebait clicks and angertainment,” Macnaughton said. “We need to continue to call this out for what it is.”
Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.