A teacher hired by a Florida school was forced by the superintendent to either resign or be fired (with no reason given) after only three weeks. Now, Shepherd Scalf is filing a discrimination complaint with the ACLU, alleging that the district thought he was trans because he’s intersex.
“Receiving this ultimatum was confusing and overwhelming. Everything had been going so well — I couldn’t understand why this was happening,” said Shepard Scalf in a statement. “The start of a school year is always brimming with promise and excitement, and I was looking forward to continuing my teaching career at Patriot Oaks until I was cornered into resigning. It became clear to me that being fired had nothing to do with my qualifications or teaching — it was about who I am.”
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Intersex as a term covers many different ways that physical sex traits and reproductive anatomy can develop in a body that do not fit the traditional binary male and female understandings some people have. Scalf is an intersex man with XY chromosomes and has Swyer’s Syndrome. People with Swyers may sometimes be born with external genitalia that appear female at birth and are therefore assigned female at birth. While some intersex people identify as trans, the majority do not.
Scalf was hired by Patriot Oaks Academy in Florida to teach Language Arts for the school year of 2025-26. However, on August 29, just three weeks into the school year, he was summoned to an “emergency meeting” with the principal. There, he was told to read a letter from Superintendent Dr. Brennan Asplen.
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The letter said that as he was in his first year and on probationary status, he was able to be dismissed without cause. It went on to make it clear that Scalf could either resign his position or be terminated. On the recommendation of his union representative, Scalf resigned as it would be easier to get another job that way than if he had a termination on his record. The letter did not provide any reason for his dismissal.
According to the complaint filed by the ACLU on Scalf’s behalf with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), during that meeting the school principal said that he “met every expectation” set for him and described his performance as “nothing less than exemplary.” This, the complaint argues, makes it clear that there was no “merits-based justification for firing” him.
While his new hire paperwork included his gender-assigned at birth, it was clear that the school understood that he was a man, going as far as to give him a placard that read “Mr. Scalf.” His gender identity nor his genetics were ever discussed with students or school district officials. According to the complaint, Scalf believes that those who chose to fire him did not know that he was intersex, but saw that his gender identity did not match his gender assigned at birth and assumed that he was trans.
The complaint also makes it clear that Scalf has evidence that the decision to fire him came from a perception that he was trans. It notes, “Following Mr. Scalf’s resignation, he received communications providing evidence that the termination followed complaints from a parent about the perception that Mr. Scalf is transgender.”
Through the complaint, Scalf seeks reinstatement, noting that he is a dedicated teacher.
The complaint says that the St. Johns County School District violated Scalf’s Title VII rights, which were established in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Supreme Court set precedent in 2020 with its decision in the case of Bostock v. Clayton County. In that case, the court ruled that Title VII includes protections against discrimination on the basis of gender identity, as it is impossible to discriminate against trans or queer people without taking into account their sex assigned at birth.
While that should make this case a simple matter, recent moves by the EEOC might complicate the matter. Earlier this year, the EEOC ruled against a trans person who filed a complaint about being denied access to the appropriate restrooms in a federal building. In their decision, they upheld that “Title VII permits a federal agency employer to maintain single-sex bathrooms and similar intimate spaces,” and “permits a federal agency employer to exclude employees, including trans-identifying employees, from opposite-sex facilities.”
There is also a pending complaint from the Legal Accountability Center against the current chair of the EEOC, Andrea Lucas, alleging that she told investigators not to look into complaints about anti-LGBTQ+ behavior and sent letters to law firms requesting DEI information in a move designed to intimidate them into ceasing and DEI programs. The complaint suggests that the EEOC itself is in violation of Title VII.
While intersex identities are often distinct from trans ones, for a long time, intersex people have been seen as something to “fix,” with doctors pressuring families to allow irreversible surgeries on intersex infants.
While the EEOC has made its stance on trans people painfully clear, it is less clear how they may handle this case.
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