The Obama administration has given OH school leaders some summer homework with a new federal directive on transgender students and bathroom use in public schools. Congress has the authority to write the law, not the executive branch, and we disagree with the heavy-handed approach the Obama administration is taking.
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The Shorewood School District is among several around the country touted by President Barack Obama’s administration for their policies prohibiting discrimination of transgender students.
“RPS follows all legislation required of public schools, including Title IX”, and pointed to School Board Policy 522, Student Sex Nondiscrimination, which protects students from discrimination based on sex under the Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and the Minnesota Human Rights Act. Public schools receive millions of dollars from the federal government through Title IX funding.
The federal education and justice departments described the letter as “significant guidance” to help schools comply with us laws that protect students from discrimination in public schools.
Regarding restrooms and locker rooms, the directive states that schools can’t require transgender students to use facilities “inconsistent with their gender identity or to use individual-user facilities when other students are not required to do so”. The lieutenant governor of Texas came out forcefully against the guidelines, saying he will not enforce the guidelines, and Mississippi’s governor called it another example of federal overreach. We are compelled to comply with state and federal laws in all circumstances. North Carolina is now in a civil rights legal battle with the Justice Department over the state’s law banning people from using public bathrooms that don’t match their biological sex.
The Santa Maria-Bonita Unified School District says it is also doing what it can to ensure students feel safe and accepted. “Transgender students must be allowed to participate in such activities and access such facilities consistent with their gender identity”, the letter reads.
“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”.
“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.
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Ms Lynch said North Carolina’s new state law had echoes of policies of racial segregation and efforts to deny gay couples the right to marry.
