Utah Board of Education member Natalie Cline will be stripped of her committee assignments and prohibited from attending some board meetings.
Utah’s Board of Education voted to censure one of its members and called for her resignation on Wednesday after she appeared to falsely suggest a teenage girl was transgender on social media.
Natalie Cline, the censured board member, posted a flyer for a Salt Lake City high school basketball team on Facebook last week, suggestively writing: “Girls’ basketball…” Although the post was later deleted — and it was revealed that the girl is not trans — Cline received a chorus of criticism from Utahns across the state last week, including from Gov. Spencer Cox.
In addition to being censured, Cline will be stripped of her committee assignments, prohibited from attending the board’s advisory committee meetings and forbidden from placing items on the board’s agenda, the board said.
She’s an elected official. Imagine if governments could just expel any elected officials they didn’t agree with. What she did is fucked, and the girl should absolutely sue. But I doubt the board of education has the power to just kick her out entirely. They pulled her out of her special committees (where a lot of policy is written before it reaches a general vote,) and barred her from attending non-essential meetings. What else do you realistically expect them to do? The board did what they could to hamstring her and prevent her from pushing actual policy.
Legislatures can expel anyone they want with a vote.