Well, it’s official. (Or at least as official as something can be before a single judge or jury has a chance to look it over.) The Obama Department of Education has ordered a school in Illinois to toe the line on “transgender students” or have their federal funding revoked.
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The school district, Palatine, looks like it might fight the decision in court, and the superintendent is calling the decision an overreach of power.
According to a “a preponderance of evidence”, the federal office determined that the school, located in Township High School District 211, violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibit sex-based discrimination in schools as an amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The ACLU noted that because of her age, the student has asked not to be identified, and has declined media requests.
The OCR said the transgender student “has not only received an unequal opportunity to benefit from the district’s educational program, but has also experienced an ongoing sense of isolation and ostracism throughout her high school enrollment” because she was required to change behind a designated curtain or outside of the girls’ locker room.
The transgender student, who was assigned male at birth but has identified as female for years, filed a complaint with the DOE’s Office for Civil Rights when she was denied unrestricted access to the girls’ locker room in late 2013, according to the Tribune.
“Students in our schools are teenagers, not adults, and one’s gender is not the same as one’s anatomy”, Dr. Cates wrote. The OCR added that if females wanted to maintain privacy, they should go change behind the curtains, although supposedly there are not enough curtains for all students in the large PE classes to privately change at the same time.
The rights of transgender students have become the focus of disputes in school districts in many states, leading to divergent approaches regarding which sports teams they can play on, bathrooms they can use and pronouns they are addressed by. The school district now has one month to comply with orders to allow the student full access to her school’s locker room, or face the loss of a few or all of its Title IX funding.
The student who originally brought the complaint was born male but has identified as female for many years.
The district said she was allowed to change inside the girls’ locker room, but only behind a privacy curtain.
While stories like this have made headlines before, the federal government’s action reiterates the administration’s commitment to transgender equality.
‘What our client wants is not hard to understand.
“This decision makes me extremely happy – because of what it means for me, personally, and for countless others”, she said.
“It is a completely new area of case law”, he said.
The school district said the issue was critical for schools nationwide.
When Hillsboro transgender student Lila Perry was granted access to the girls’ locker room, for example, 200 students walked out over what they believed was a violation of their rights to privacy and safety. Both her and her mother were under the impression she would be provided access to the girls’ locker room in high school to avoid such situations.
The Department of Education’s statements are not binding in court, Yuracko said. For the school to isolate and remind this young woman how she might be different than the other students is unimaginably cruel.
Demoya Gordon, an attorney at Lambda Legal, which advocates for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, said the Palatine case was unusual for how vocal the school district had been.
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In an effort to pre-empt the Department of Education’s ruling (and frame their discrimination as “reasonable” and “sensible”) District 211 has engaged in a comprehensive public relations campaign over the past two weeks, including a news event on October 12 announcing that they would reject the decision issued today.
