Former Lake Oswego High School coach sues school district over firing related to transgender participation in athletics

John Parks, the former track and field and cross country coach at Lake Oswego High School, filed a lawsuit against the Lake Oswego School District and Lake Oswego School Board on Wednesday, July 24 in the U.S. District Court District of Oregon.

The complaint, which was first reported by OregonLive, alleges that the district violated Parks’s First Amendment free speech rights and conducted an unlawful retaliatory investigation and subsequent firing, in violation of his 14th Amendment right to due process.

Parks was fired from LOSD at the end of the 2023-24 school year, following an investigation into a letter he sent to the Oregon School Activities Association in May.

Parks seeks to be reinstated as the head coach at LOHS, the removal of “derogatory comments related to the investigation and termination from his employment record and personnel file” and “monetary damages against the District and Board in an amount to be determined at trial,” according to the complaint.

In the letter to OSAA — the governing body for interscholastic athletic competitions in Oregon — Parks expressed his views about rules regarding transgender athletes’ participation in track and field events at the high school level.

“In Parks’s view, as he expressed in his letter, OSAA’s current policies on transgender athletes— particularly those that relate to athletes born as biological males who are allowed to compete as females —were flawed and posed a threat to the ongoing existence and integrity of female athletics,” the complaint states.

Park suggested to OSAA that transgender student-athletes compete against each other in an “open division” and that OSAA policy should align with the rules and standards of the International Olympic Committee and global athletic institutions.

Following a complaint from Marshall Haskins, Portland Public Schools’ athletic director, regarding Parks’ letter and actions during the track and field season, Parks was fired from his role at LOHS for violating the school board’s “hazing, harassment, intimidation, bullying, menacing, cyberbullying, teen dating violence or domestic violence” and nondiscrimination policies.

Haskins’s original letter alleged that Parks had contacted students, families and other coaches about OSAA’s transgender student-athlete policy. The letter also claims that Parks sent the email to OSAA to specifically stop a specific student-athlete from competing at the state track meet. In the lawsuit, Park denies the allegations put forth in the letter.

Parks claims that LOSD violated his First Amendment right to speech and 14th Amendment right to due process with how it addressed his letter to OSAA and eventual termination.

The lawsuit demands a jury trial. Defendants have 21 days to respond to a complaint in U.S. District Court.

Neither the Lake Oswego School District nor Parks’s attorneys immediately responded for comment.