The guidance does not impose any new legal requirements.
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Single-sex classes allowed under certain circumstances “must allow transgender students to participate consistent with their gender identity”.
“There is no room in our schools for discrimination of any kind, including discrimination against transgender students on the basis of their sex”, said Attorney General Loretta E Lynch, after she issued the guidelines along with the Education Secretary John B King. “These have no justification in law, there is no authority for these departments to force schools to allow biological males access to the girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms”, said Jocelyn Floyd, associate counsel with the Thomas More Society. “Over the past several years we’ve had transgender students come forward, and we’ve worked to accommodate them, based on their individual needs and rights and also the needs and rights of all students”.
While the guidance doesn’t carry the weight of the law, the letter does indicate schools should either fall in line or face loss of federal funding.
In Texas, the lieutenant governor said the state is prepared to forfeit billions of dollars in federal funding for public schools over the directive.
Texas’ Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick told Fox News that his states “will not yield to blackmail from the president of the United States”.
Steve Schildcrout, treasurer of the Youngstown chapter of PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friend of Lesbians and Gays), said the organization supports the federal directive.
“I don’t think it will change anything that we’re now doing”, Gausman said.
Vitti says while each situation has been different, for some transgender students a neutral or private bathroom has been the solution.
Advocates for transgender rights hailed it as a breakthrough for civil rights, intensifying what has emerged as one of the fiercest battles in the nation’s culture wars.
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.
Online, others used the new Obama guidelines to link all restroom sexual assaults to transgender people using their preferred facilities.
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“I haven’t reviewed that letter, but I don’t think any decision that comes from the federal government dictating what each school must do is probably a good idea”.
