Manufactured Outrage: Trans Athlete Complaint Reveals Coordinated Attack on Michigan Student
A cisgender girl who never saw a trans teammate in the locker room claims privacy violation
A cisgender girl who never saw a trans teammate in the locker room claims privacy violation, and Michigan's latest sports battle heads to court.
I try hard to find positive stories related to our community. Some days I can, but many days I can't.
Today is one of those days.
The leading story regarding the trans community in our state is taking place in a courtroom, as it does so often.
It concerns the parents of a cisgender girl who have filed a complaint naming Skyline High School in Ann Arbor for allowing a trans girl to play on the volleyball team. According to a report on Fox 2 News in Detroit, Sean Lechner, whose daughter attends Monroe High School, submitted the Title IX complaint Dec. 5 with the U.S. Department of Education, the Michigan Department of Education, the state's high school athletic association and Monroe Public Schools.
Teams from both schools used the same locker room during matches on Sept. 9 and Oct. 25, which spurred accusations of student privacy being violated.
I'm sure you are as tired of hearing this same complaint as I am. Not mentioned in this particular account — but found in other news sources that hide behind paywalls — is the fact that the complaining cis girl never even saw the trans girl in the locker room. Yet, that didn't stop the cis girl from saying in a press conference that "this was definitely devastating for all of us girls."
"This person did disguise themselves to look like a female so when we found out weeks after that there was another male in the same locker room as us as we were changing and also playing against us, it caught everyone off guard," Briley Lechner said.
So, to sum up: this cis girl was "devastated" retroactively when she found out a trans girl had played in a game against her school. Huh?
What's particularly troubling about this story is how it became a story at all. Since September, OutKick published 19 articles about this one high school student. Reporter Dan Zaksheske, who writes for the conservative sports site owned by Fox Corporation, attended at least four high school volleyball games, recorded videos of the girls playing and tweeted about the situation at least 41 times.
When Zaksheske was confronted by school officials about his presence at games, he published another article claiming he had been "harassed by faculty at Skyline High" while working on the story.
Of course, due to his relentless coverage and his claim of harassment, a local story about one high school athlete has gone national.
The lawyers for the complainant are using the guise of President Trump's provocatively titled "Keeping Men Out Of Women's Sports" executive order to justify their contention.
Excuse me while I vomit.
Here's what the complaint conveniently ignores: The Michigan High School Athletic Association confirmed in December that it received one waiver request for a transgender student athlete for the fall 2025 season, and that waiver was granted "in compliance with applicable state and federal law." The student in question was eligible to play.
Every female Republican member of Michigan's House sent a letter to MHSAA in November demanding confirmation of the waiver and calling for the student to be declared ineligible. The student's high school season ended anyway when Skyline lost to Byron Center in the state quarterfinals. The trans athlete finished her season with First Team All-Conference honors.
Meanwhile, the collateral damage from this manufactured controversy continues to mount. Chet Hesson, Monroe Public Schools' athletic director, was placed on paid administrative leave after expressing basic human empathy in a podcast interview. "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."
Less than 24 hours later, he was suspended. Monroe Public Schools issued a statement clarifying that individual staff members' personal opinions "do not express the official position of the District."
God forbid someone show compassion for a child being targeted by a coordinated media campaign.
Anyway, we already know how this will play out. Monroe Public Schools has hired a third party to investigate the Title IX complaint. Skyline High School will issue carefully worded statements about respecting all student athletes. And the U.S. Department of Education, under Trump's administration, will likely use this case as another weapon in its broader campaign against trans youth.
The irony is that Michigan's legislative situation mirrors the national divide. The Republican-controlled state House has passed two bills to prohibit transgender participation in girls' and women's sports. The Democrat-controlled state Senate has refused to even consider them. So we exist in this limbo where trans athletes are technically protected at the state level but under assault from federal policy and relentless right-wing media campaigns.
I wish I could predict a better outcome for Michigan trans athletes, but the prevailing winds in this country are against us. Particularly on this matter.
Trans athletes in our state and around the U.S. are competing against more than just other athletes. It's an unfair matchup that pits kids against a coordinated assault from right-wing media, politicians seeking culture war victories and a federal government determined to erase their existence. And it disgusts me that everyone doesn't see it that way.
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