A Georgia high school senior was reportedly forced to withdraw from her private Christian school just weeks before graduation after bringing a transgender friend to prom—a decision her family says shattered their trust in the school’s values of acceptance and compassion.
Emily Wright, a senior at North Cobb Christian School in Kennesaw, had looked forward to celebrating her final year with friends at prom. Emily and her mother, Tricia Wright, adhered strictly to the guest permission form requirements for the event, which took place off-campus and off school grounds. The only restriction on the form was the guest’s age.
But ten days after the prom, Emily was summoned to the principal’s office and asked a question she says made the school’s intentions painfully clear: “Is there anything we should know about the guest you brought to prom?”
“I knew exactly what they were talking about,” Emily recalled. “So I said, ‘Yes, he’s transgender.’”
Shortly after that meeting, Tricia Wright received a call from the school’s principal informing her that Emily would need to be withdrawn.
“I got a call from the principal who said, ‘Ms. Wright, I’ve been informed that Emily brought a transgender guest to prom. Were you aware of that?’ I said yes,” said Tricia. “She said, ‘Well, I’m sorry, Ms. Wright, we’re going to have to expel Emily.’”
The expulsion came with just weeks left in the school year. Emily, blindsided and devastated, scrambled to find another school in time to graduate.
“I cried very hard,” she said. “I was just thinking that my entire future was in jeopardy. ‘Where am I going to go to school? Where am I going to graduate?’”
Emily has since enrolled in a local public school and will still be able to graduate and pursue college plans, but the experience has left a lasting emotional scar on her and her family.
While the Wrights acknowledge that private Christian schools may have distinct rules or religious guidelines, they say they expected those to be guided by the core Christian values of kindness and love—not exclusion.
“That’s not, in my opinion, a good example; to not be kind, not be loving, not be accepting, to be exclusive instead of inclusive,” Tricia said. “This isn’t what we thought a Christian education was supposed to teach.”
North Cobb Christian School has not issued a public statement about the incident. According to Georgia law, private institutions have wide discretion in enforcing policies based on religious values, but incidents like Emily’s highlight ongoing tensions between LGBTQ+ inclusion and the policies of faith-based schools.
As Emily prepares to walk across a different graduation stage than she expected, she does so carrying both the weight of injustice and the strength of resilience, traits she hopes will guide her into a brighter future beyond the school that turned her away.
