In 2017, a Chinese university student sued the Jinan University Press over a mental health textbook that classified homosexuality as a “psychosexual disorder.” Although the country’s leading psychiatric association removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses almost 20 years ago, on Sept. 2, a district court in the eastern province of Jiangsu ruled in favor of the publisher, declaring the textbook’s classification of homosexuality not a “factual error,” but rather “cognitive dissonance.”

The plaintiff, a woman identified in court documents only as “Xixi,” has already filed an appeal. She’s not the first Chinese college student to turn to the courts in an effort to get homophobic content removed from the classroom: In 2015, another student sued the Ministry of Education for failing to address the issue of homopahobia in textbooks. Her suit was rejected, but at least one implicated publisher apologized and announced it would revise its materials.

Although both legal battles ended in defeat, at least so far, the plaintiffs’ actions have helped bring increased attention to this important issue. The World Health Organization declassified “homosexuality” as a mental health disorder in 1990; the Chinese Psychiatric Association followed suit in 2001. For textbooks not only to disregard these decisions, but to actively contribute to the stigmatization of homosexuality as sexual deviancy or a psychosexual disorder, harks back to a time when discrimination against sexual minorities was perpetuated in the name of science — to say nothing of the harm it does to LGBT students.

In recent years, a growing number of scholars have argued that homophobic acts on campus should be examined through the institutional and environmental factors that make them possible. Read more via Sixth Tone