The Obama administration has issued new guidelines allowing transgender students at public schools to use the bathroom and locker rooms of their choice.
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Hilary F. Davis, youth services coordinator for ACR Health on Washington Street, said she was pleased to see the federal government address the issue, especially following contention over a law recently passed in North Carolina that requires everyone to use public facilities according to birth gender.
Smith says the district probably could not afford to not comply with the news guidelines because they get millions of dollars in federal funds.
The move comes in the wake of the controversy surrounding the so-called “bathroom law” in North Carolina.
“There is no room in our schools for discrimination of any kind, including discrimination against transgender students on the basis of their sex”, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said.
A letter, issued jointly by the US departments of Education and Justice, states that transgender students are protected under Title IX, which prohibits K-12 districts, colleges and universities that receive federal dollars from discriminating against students based on sex.
Yost also brushed aside concerns that the law would be abused and students would falsely claim to be transgender to access bathrooms used by the opposite gender, a common refrain among critics of the laws. The advisory said students should be able to use restrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity. It’s looking to repeal the state’s current law allowing transgender people to use the bathroom they identify with. The guidance going out to school districts on Friday makes it clear that as far as the departments of Justice and Education are concerned, that word “sex” includes gender identity.
“That really singled me out among my peers, because they saw that the school wasn’t even treating me as an equal, so they didn’t need to, either”, he said. “Public schools’ restroom policies should not be shaped by federal coercion”.
“First of all, all across the state, school attorneys differ at the question on to whether we can change a student’s transcript of demographic information without a court order”. “As is consistently recognized in civil rights cases, the desire to accommodate others’ discomfort can not justify a policy that singles out and disadvantages a particular class of students”, the letter says.
The document lists four specific examples of how pronouns are used at school districts around the country.
Schools are allowed to use single-use bathrooms for students who want “additional privacy”, but the school can not require transgender students to use a single-use bathroom if their classmates are not required to do the same. The Justice Department on Monday filed a civil rights lawsuit against North Carolina.
“I don’t think it will change anything that we’re now doing”, Gausman said.
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She said the district will review the federal guidance.
