Utah State’s Board of Education voted to censure one of its members on Wednesday over a recent social media post in which she questioned a teenage girl’s gender, resulting in online harassment and attacks against the girl.
In a statement on Wednesday, the board wrote that the member, Natalie Cline, will be barred from attending board meetings and stripped of her committee assignments. While the board has no power or authority to unseat an elected official, it also urged Cline to resign from her position by Feb. 19.
The censure decision follows an investigation into a controversial Facebook post from Cline last week, in which she shared a flyer of a high school girls basketball team that included a photo. In the caption, Cline wrote “Girls’ basketball…” — implying that the teenage girl in the photo was transgender.
The post, which has now been taken down, garnered hateful comments in which users attacked the teenager in the photo and discussed personal information about her. The harassment that the girl received was so severe that she needed police protection, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.
The board’s decision to censure Cline was made in order to uphold the its policy and bylaws, which state that “members shall respect the privacy of students, USBE employees, and school level employees, including refraining from direct and indirect identification of such, in a negative light in any public setting, venue, or platform where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy.”
“The Board would like to extend its deepest apologies to those harmed by this conduct, in particular the student who was targeted because of Member Cline’s post,” the board wrote in its statement Wednesday. “No individual, especially a child, should be subject to such comments and judgment. We hope that the actions taken today can provide support for the student and the family.”
Cline did not immediately respond to 360aproko request for comment.
In a Facebook post earlier on Wednesday, Cline claimed that the board’s process of ousting her was “election interference” and that she was not afforded due process.
“I look forward to hearing from the @utboardofed and participating in a fair process that reflects the due process that must be afforded me due to the accusations made against me,” she wrote in the post.
Cline had apologized to the teenage girl and her family last week in a statement after taking down the original post, apologizing for the negative attention and derogatory comments that came their way as a result of her post.
But the official still defended her actions, pointing out that her original post never claimed that the teenager was a boy but that she “does have a larger build, like her parents.”
“We live in strange times when it is normal to pause and wonder if people are what they say they are because of the push to normalize transgenderism in our society. But that is definitely not the case with this student…” she wrote.
Cline’s post went on to place blame on the transgender community for the incident, stating that incorrectly assuming the girl’s gender was “a sad consequence of the trans movement being foisted upon us, which puts us all in a difficult spot. Nobody wants to question if a kid is the gender they say they are.”
In 2022, Utah passed legislation barring transgender girls from playing in female sports, but the law was reversed by a judge months later.
These efforts to restrict transgender people from participating in school sportsat the K-12 or collegiate levels have been replicated in other states across the country.
Proponents of such bans argue that transgender women would dominate cisgender women in sports, while opponents say that they unfairly target and discriminate against transgender students. For instance, in Kentucky, an anti-transgender sports bill was passed even though there was only one known transgender athlete playing sports in the entire state.
At least 22 states in the U.S. introduced anti-transgender sports bills in 2023. This year, 44 bills have been introduced in states, several of which are advancing.
