Utah Official Censured After Falsely Suggesting Teen Girl Was Transgender

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,