DALLAS — Stacy Bailey is an awarded teacher. The love of her life is her wife Julie Vazquez.
Now, that second fact can’t threaten her ability to do the first.
In the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling Monday in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia said employers can’t discriminate based on sexual orientation or gender. The 6-3 decision gives Bailey the protections the State of Texas didn’t have when she needed them.
In 2017, she shared a photo of Vazquez with her students at Charlotte Anderson Elementary in Arlington. Parents complained and Mansfield ISD put her on administrative leave.
"It is not appropriate for teachers to promote the LGBTQ agenda to elementary age school, intermediate school or high school children," said a member of the Mansfield ISD community at a board meeting in April 2018.
Bailey filed a federal discrimination lawsuit. In February, Mansfield ISD awarded Bailey $100,000 after a federal judge ruled her suspension was unconstitutional.
As part of the settlement, the school district agreed to provide mandatory training to human resources and counseling staff on LGBTQ issues in schools, and to require the Mansfield ISD board of trustees to vote on whether to add protections for sexual orientation into its policies, according to a representative for Bailey.
She is still teaching, but no longer teaching the elementary kids she loved. She believes the Supreme Court's decision might have kept her with those students.
"If this would have happened three years ago, maybe my discrimination and me losing my classroom of 10 years would have never actually happened," she said.
So has there been growth? The couple thinks so, evidenced by conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch writing the decision’s opinion.
"I can’t say that I had faith that a Trump appointee would support my rights, but it goes to show that LGBT rights are human rights and we were seen as humans today," said Bailey.
