It's not just an American thing: here's what I found on the ATL website (a
British teaching union):
The Education and Inspections Act 2006 enables school staff to use "such
force as is reasonable in the circumstances to prevent a pupil from doing or
continuing to do" any of the following:
- causing personal injury to any person (including the pupil themselves)
- causing damage to the property of any person (including the pupil themselves)

Marie
France

On Thu, 5 Jan 2012 02:55:32 +0000, helene hoover <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>
>Marshall:
> 
>Not a problem. I worked in the legal field in a previous life and only the
lawyers my age and older have a problem with it.
> 
>Helene
> 
>
>
>
>Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2011 19:51:33 +0000
>From: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: "They" - New 1st Pn. Genderless Singular
>To: [log in to unmask]
>
>
>
>
>
>
>Grammarphiles,
> 
>I wonder if the “they,” meaning both singular and plural, and male and
female, will ever present a legal problem:
> 
>                  Witness: I told the sheriff that  somebody (the word
could be regarded as singular since it takes a singular verb, e.g. somebody
waits) broke into my house.
> 
>                 Lawyer: Do you know who it was?
> 
>                 Witness: I don’t know but they must have had a key.
> 
>                 Lawyer: Really, so there was more than one? Let me get
this straight:  There was just one person or more than one? Are you saying
that my client acted with another person or persons?
> 
>Am I stretching credulity, or do I know lawyers too well to doubt that this
scenario would happen?
> 
>Marshall
> 
>
>
>From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Geoffrey Layton
>Sent: Sunday, December 25, 2011 1:46 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: "They" - New 1st Pn. Genderless Singular
> 
>
>Just in case anyone doubts that "they" is fast becoming the new default for
the genderless third person singular pronoun, here's an example from an
email I just received from something called "Spam Arrest":
> 
>Thank you for verifying your email address with Spam Arrest!
>
>Your email has been forwarded to brian koepf's inbox. All of your 
>future emails to brian koepf will also be delivered directly into 
>their inbox. 
>Far better, I think, than the awkward "him/her, his/hers, he/she" (which is
also sexist - why should the masculine precede the feminine?). 
> 
>Geoff Layton
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