(Bigstock photo)
Just days after the father of a student at Monroe Public Schools filed a Title IX complaint to the U.S. Department of Education over claims that a student at Ann Arbor Skyline High School’s girls volleyball team is transgender, Chet Hesson, the athletic director for Monroe Public Schools, has been placed on paid administrative leave, Andrew Shaw, the district’s superintendent, confirmed.
Sean Lechner, whose daughter Briley plays on the Monroe High School volleyball team, filed the complaint against both Monroe and Ann Arbor Public Schools, as well as the Michigan High School Athletic Association.
“The District has requested a third party to complete the Title IX investigation and provide a recommended determination,” Monroe Public Schools said in a statement. “The district has chosen to use a third party so that the investigation can be completed in a manner that allows for complete transparency from beginning to end.”
The Title IX complaint alleges that, at a Sept. 9 game between Monroe High School and Ann Arbor Skyline, the two teams shared a locker room.
“My daughter was forced to share a locker room, where females undressed, with the male athlete,” the complaint says. “The presence of a male in the girls’ locker room was not disclosed prior to the match, constituting a violation of privacy and bodily integrity protections under Title IX.”
Lechner is calling for an investigation into the situation and a ban on trans athletes playing on girls’ teams.
“Title IX was written to protect students from discrimination and so that all girls can play sports,” Erin Knott, the executive director of Equality Michigan, wrote in a statement to Michigan Advance. “The law was never intended to force schools to disclose private information about children.”
“Parents may have questions, but that doesn’t mean they can pressure schools to confirm or deny whether a student is transgender,” Knott added. “Trans students have been participating in team sports for decades in Michigan, learning the same things all students learn about teamwork, dedication, and hard work.”
The complaint also alleges that the Michigan High School Athletic Association did not appropriately grant a waiver for a transgender player to play on a girls’ sports team.
The Michigan High School Athletic Association says it received one waiver for a transgender child to play sports for the 2025-26 fall sports season, Geoff Kimmerly, the communications for the association wrote to the Advance.
Kimmerly did not provide further information due to privacy laws, but added that “the waiver was granted in compliance with applicable state and federal law.”
Current association guidelines do not prohibit transgender girls from playing on girls’ sports teams at the high school level, but do require submission of documentation that details the gender listed on a number of documents for the student, as well as information on the status of the student’s medical transition.
The Skyline High School student, who has not been publicly named, came under fire after a right-wing sports blog owned by Fox Corporation published a wave of articles attacking the student, as well as the state’s high school athletic association for its handling of the situation.
The decision to put Hesson on leave came after Uncloseted Media, a LGBTQ+ news outlet, posted a brief clip of an interview that they did with Hesson on their Instagram account.
“For this alleged student at Skyline, my heart goes to them, whether they’re trans or not, just having that much negative eyeball on you and rhetoric is incredible,” Hesson said. “The amount of pressure that you feel as a 16 or 17 or 18 year old to have to deal with that, I would not wish that on anybody.”
“Monroe Public Schools only issues official statements through the Office of the Superintendent or the Board President. Individual staff members expressing their personal opinions do not express the official position of the District,” Monroe Public Schools wrote in a statement. “The Athletic Director’s podcast appearance was not previously authorized by the District and is not an official statement on behalf of the District.”
“You’re really impacting somebody’s life in a negative way,” Hesson said in the interview. “And not just that one person, but any other trans athlete that wants to participate, but is choosing not to because they don’t have to go through this s**t.”
This story was originally produced by Michigan Advance, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Florida Phoenix, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. The stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
