With the school year just beginning in many districts, parents at two schools are already expressing outrage that transgender students are being allowed to use the bathrooms that match their identities.
At Hillsboro High School in Missouri, Lila Perry came out as transgender last year. She used a unisex faculty restroom for a time, but felt ostracized, so this year told the school she wanted to be treated like other female students and use the girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms. The school has been supportive, but parents have have not.
Parents at the school have claimed that Perry’s bathroom usage is violating the privacy of other girls. They held a protest Monday alongside a student walkout while Perry remained in the principal’s office for her safety. Shortly after, Jeff Childs and his son Blayke held their own demonstration, driving around the parking lot with “Girls Rights Matter” painted on their Ford pickup. “This needs to stop before it goes too far,” Childs warned.
The conservative legal juggernaut the Alliance Defending Freedom has also gotten involved, sending a letter to the district asking it to change its decision. “Compelling students to share restrooms and locker rooms with members of the opposite sex,” the letter claims, “violates their right to bodily privacy and would not only lead to potential legal liability for the School District and its employees, but would also violate the students’ and parents’ fundamental rights.”
A similar dispute is playing out in Troy City Schools in Ohio. Parents were notified Friday by a telephone message that students would be allowed to use restrooms that match their gender identity and that restrooms would be available for students and visitors who do not want to use shared restrooms. Superintendent Eric Herman confirmed Monday that the school is allowing a trans student to use the men’s room in accordance with his gender identity.
Protests have since ensued. On Monday, Bryan Kemper, who has six children in district schools, stood outside the board of education offices with signs saying, “My students deserve privacy/No co-ed bathrooms.” Competing protests gathered there again Tuesday morning. Some held signs reading, “I support Troy City Schools” and “I support trans and non-binary students,” while others joined Kemper to hold signs like “Outrage hundreds to please one student?!?!?”
Both schools insist that they are simply abiding by the Department of Education’s recent guidance instructing that Title IX includes protections for transgender students — that to discriminate against transgender students is to discriminate on the basis of their gender. And both schools have received the support of their state education organizations.
Kelli Hopkins of the Missouri School Board’s Association explained, “The Office of Civil Rights has issued an opinion that says, if you do this, you have engaged in gender discrimination.” Sara Clark, director of legal services for the Ohio School Boards Association, similarly noted that students are increasingly having conversations with their schools about their identities, referring to an article she wrote last year about the issue as well as the Title IX guidance.
Clark’s article notes that “transgender issues are widely misunderstood and often can lead to an unwarranted fear on the part of school administrators, board members and the school community.” Fears about privacy, however, are unwarranted. Many schools have had transgender-inclusive policies for years but there has never been a documented case of any student — transgender or otherwise — taking advantage of the gender identity protections to violate someone else’s privacy. Moreover, any student who attempted such a thing would still be subject to discipline. Even outside of schools, statewide transgender protections have never created safety or privacy concerns in restrooms.
But transgender-inclusive policies do make a difference for the students most impacted by them. Lila Perry, for example, dropped out of her physical education class because there was too little supervision to ensure she felt safe. Moreover, though she insists, “I am a girl. I am not going to be pushed away to another bathroom,” she admits that she rarely uses the bathroom now at school. One study in the Washington, D.C. area found that 70 percent of transgender people had experienced some kind of negative reaction when just trying to use the restroom.
“I’m not going to hurt their daughters,” Perry explained. “I’m not going to expose myself. I’m not a pervert; I’m a transgender woman; I’m a girl. I’m just in there to change, do my business, and that if they have any questions about being transgender, they are more than welcome to talk to me, and I’ll be happy to explain it.”
Students, however, have seen fit to draw their own conclusions about Perry’s gender identity. They have tweeted and shared comments like, “OMG IM TIRED OF EVERYONE SAYING ‘but he is a girl and should be allowed in the girls facilities’ GIRLS DONT HAVE WEINERS,” “Maybe school locker rooms should be gender neutral because kids don’t know if they wanna have a wiener or a vag,” and “Putting on a dress and putting on a wig is not transgender to me.”
The National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) countered, in a statement provided to ThinkProgress, that “Transgender students only want to be treated fairly and with dignity, and to have the same opportunities other students have. We applaud school officials in Hillsboro, MO, Troy, OH, and in states and districts across the country who are following Title IX’s equal opportunity mandate and understand that it extends to all parts of school. That includes something as basic as using the restroom without being singled out and isolated.”
To the students and parents concerned about transgender students at their school, NCTE hopes that they take the time to learn more about who transgender people are. “We ask that community members who have not had the chance to know a transgender person in their lives open their hearts and understand that equal treatment for transgender students takes nothing away from them — nothing at all. That’s clear from the experience of thousands of schools from Maine to Louisville to Chicago to Spokane.”
The Department of Education did not directly respond to a ThinkProgress inquiry about Hillsboro and Troy, but referred back to other department materials that emphasize the importance of ensuring that schools are “safe and affirming environments for everyone.”
Update:
The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights provided ThinkProgress with the following statement:
The Department of Education is committed to providing school officials with the tools that they need to adopt effective approaches to preventing and addressing harassment and discrimination against LGBT students.
The Department’s Office for Civil Rights has clarified that Title IX’s prohibition on sex discrimination encompasses discrimination and harassment based on gender identity and gender nonconformity, and has articulated that to comply with Title IX a school generally must treat students consistent with their gender identity. The Departments of Education and Justice have also entered statements of interest in two federal district court cases, which further explain school districts’ Title IX obligations toward transgender students. Further, the Departments have negotiated remedies with school districts to resolve Title IX complaints filed on behalf of LGBT students.