The Obama Administration released a letter to all public schools in the nation Friday to allow transgender students to decide which restroom they are comfortable using.
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Other Republican-led states joined calls to disregard the White House’s directive and accused the administration of overstepping its role.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, reiterated in a statement that the guidance was not federal.
He said the guidance was not an “enforcement action”, instead framing it a way to underscore existing law and offer “practical solutions” to school administrators who are trying to ensure student safety.
“These groundbreaking guidelines not only underscore the Obama administration’s position that discriminating against transgender students is flat-out against the law, but they provide public school districts with needed and specific guidance guaranteeing that transgender students should be using facilities consistent with their gender identity”, said Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin.
“He says he’s going to withhold funding if schools do not follow the policy”, Patrick said at a Friday news conference. The law says ‘sex, ‘ not gender identity.
“You can’t fix everything with one comment or whatever, but you can help people over time help people to try to understand”, said Cecil, a tenth grader at Ferndale High School who is also a transgender boy.
“That is what I would like to see”, Prosser said, “and from there you can make better decisions”.
It also urged privacy for transgender students, informing schools they needed to “take reasonable steps” to keep a students assigned sex or birth name private if a student wishes, or risk violating the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. “For us, it’s not an issue”.
The lawmaker’s proposal would have allowed for transgender people to use unisex bathrooms with full partitions.
“North Carolina will not stand by and let our locker rooms and high school showers be used for social experimentation at the expense of the privacy and protection of our young boys and girls”, Lt. Gov. Dan Forest said.
“With regard to transgender students, we will continue working closely with our legal counsel to understand how the new guidance… impacts our day-to-day work”, she said in an email.
Officials in several Maryland school districts say they already comply with tenets outlined Friday in a directive from the Obama administration to accommodate the needs of transgender students – including allowing them to use the restroom of their choice.
This week, the justice department and North Carolina sued each other over a state law that restricts access to bathrooms, locker rooms and changing rooms.
As an effort to combat discrimination and students feeling unwelcome at school, according to the guidance, public schools and universities that receive state funding must treat students in a way that coincides with their chosen gender identity.
It was signed by Catherine Lhamon, assistant secretary for in the Office for Civil Rights with the Department of Education, and Vanita Gupta, head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division.
In recent years, the Obama administration has thrown its support behind the LGBT community.
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“It’s the job of the people with good morality to protect our women and children from our godless government”, he said.
