ORONO, ME – A court in Maine has decided to award a transgender teenager $75,000 after she was asked to use a staff bathroom, instead of a student one.
Nicole Maines won her lawsuit against the Orono school district in January before the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. The Portland Press Herald reports that a lower court awarded her the settlement last week.
Penobscot County Superior Court issued an order Nov. 25 that prohibited the district from “refusing access by transgender students to school restrooms that are consistent with their gender identity.”
The order says the district must pay the $75,000 to Boston-based Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders and Berman Simmons, a Portland law firm that represented Maines. The money will cover legal expenses and related costs, with a portion going to her family.
The Bangor Daily News reported that Maines, 17, was denied access to a student bathroom after the grandfather of a male student complained.
The following year, as a sixth-grader, Maines was again denied access to the girls bathroom at Orono Middle School. She sued, starting a seven-year process that began with a complaint to the Maine Human Rights Commission in 2008 and a second complaint filed in 2009.
Nicole Maines’ parents, Wayne and Kelly Maines, then sued what is now Regional School Unit 26 in 2009 in Penobscot County Superior Court on behalf of their daughter, who has a twin brother.
A final order in her case was issued Nov. 25 in Penobscot County Superior Court, stating that Orono violated the law and preventing the school district “from refusing access by transgender students to school restrooms that are consistent with their gender identity.”
A recent episode of the popular show South Park dealt with exactly this type of case in their recent episode “Cissy.”
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