• 2025-04-30 20:03:40
• Racial Discrimination

PINELLAS COUNTY, FL — A transgender male teacher has filed a lawsuit against Pinellas County Schools, the Florida Department of Education and others after being forced to resign for refusing to use the wrong pronouns.

Toby Tobin, who lived in Pinellas County at the time, taught fifth-grade math and science at Cross Bayou Elementary School in Pinellas Park from April 2021 through July 2023.

During his time at the school, he asked students and colleagues to refer to him using the pronouns "they/them" and "he/him" and as "Mr. Tobin," according to his lawsuit.

The school complied with Tobin's request and he was "unaware of any issues" until May 2023, when House Bill 1069 was passed, expanding the so-called "Don't Say Gay" bill to prohibit the use of pronouns consistent with one's gender identity in public schools.

At that point, they told him he would have to start using titles such as "Mrs., Ms. and Miss" in the classroom, according to his lawsuit.

Tobin is accusing the FDE, school district and others of discrimination and violating his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

The Florida Department of Education didn't respond to Patch's request for comment. Pinellas County Schools told Patch that it doesn't comment on pending lawsuits.

"I was hired in the spring of 2021 as Mr. Tobin," he told Patch. "The district was aware that I was medically and legally transitioning at the time. I taught as a transgender person at the school I was working for up through the law, and I did not ask for anything different. It was the law asking me specifically to change what I was doing. Even so, after the law, I am continuing to be transgender and will be, but as I taught in the schools, my pronouns were up on the board for the majority of my time as an educator. Towards the end, I was asked to remove them for my safety."

While students would occasionally misgender him, others who speak up to correct them. But there were never any conversations about his gender — or gender in general — he said.

"There was no discussion in the classroom of my identity as a trans person. I taught math and science, and that's what I did," Tobin said. "As a fifth-grade teacher there are a lot of standards to cover specifically because fifth grade is a major testing year for Florida state assessments. So there's no time to address anything other than the exact curriculum that the county has prescribed for the students."

He tried to find other titles he could use in the classroom.

"I now own a tree and 4 square feet of land in Scotland. It's campy, but I tried to be Lord Tobin. I became a minister with the Universal Life Church to attempt to go by Minister Tobin. That was also shot down," he said.

Tobin added, "I also made a donation to the principality of Sealand, which is a very small army-based country about 80 miles off the coast of the United Kingdom. And I became a count, which I thought was great because I teach math, so also Count Tobin. However, none of those honorifics were appropriate for the district and I would have been required to go by Mrs. Tobin and I would not have been allowed to correct anybody who misgendered me or said otherwise."

He and his wife had purchased a home near the school, which their son also attended, and they hoped to plant roots in the community.

Instead, because of the district's "failure to provide reasonable accommodation for his gender identity," Tobin was forced to resign from Cross Bayou, according to his lawsuit.

"The hostile work environment, coupled with the defendants' insistence on misgendering (Tobin) and denying him the ability to express his identity in the workplace created an intolerable situation where (he) had no other option but to resign," the lawsuit reads.

Tobin and his family have moved to a state in the northeastern U.S., where he currently teaches a self-contained autism class.

"And there's never any question or stress about who Mr. Tobin is," he said. "I don't have to go to school and worry that a law is going to pass that's going to prohibit me from teaching. I don't have to go to school and worry that I'm going to be terminated because I am a person that is transgender. It is so accepting up here and allows me to do my best work as a teacher because I don't have this in the back of my brain."

An author and illustrator, he's also written and published a children's book about his experience, "Call Me Mr. Tobin."