New federal guidelines
In fact, they come from everywhere — Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Minnesota, Nevada, Texas and Virginia, to name some of the states where public schools have wrestled with how best to deal with the rights of transgender students.
In school districts throughout the country, practices have become increasingly contentious, leading to lawsuits and, in some instances, federal intervention. Disputes have led to divergent approaches regarding participation on sports teams, access to locker rooms and bathrooms, and appropriate use of pronouns. In reaction, a handful of states, including Vermont, have strengthened laws protecting the rights of transgender students; other states have debated bills that would deny those rights.
In short, public schools have been at the epicenter of transgender issues for some time and thus have become a cultural battleground. Any suggestion that the Obama administration manufactured a wedge issue to rile social conservatives during an election year is nonsense. Rather, by sending a letter to school districts saying that students must be allowed to use the facilities that match their gender identity, officials hoped to clarify civil rights laws. Title IX bans sex discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal funds.
The transgender community is relatively small, less than 1 percent of the population, according to estimates. Even so, there have been numerous cases suggesting that schools could benefit from guidance on how to ensure equal protection under the law. One particular case seems to have been a tipping point. Last fall, federal education officials declared that a district in Palatine, Ill., northwest of Chicago, had violated Title IX when it failed to allow a transgender student who identifies as a girl to use the girls’ locker rooms without restrictions. It was the first time the U.S. Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights had found a school district in violation of civil rights laws over transgender issues.
Facing enforcement action, which could have included loss of federal funds, the Illinois district settled with education officials, agreeing to provide the student with access to the girls’ locker rooms and to protect both her privacy and that of other students by installing curtains, among other steps.
The resolution in Palatine, however, failed to resolve political discontent, and the backlash was swift. Some students and parents filed suit against the school district and the U.S. Department of Education, asserting that the agreement tramples students’ privacy rights and creates an intimidating and hostile environment — assertions that echo the argument of the transgender student denied access to the girls’ locker rooms in the first place. Plaintiffs further argue that the inclusion of gender identity under Title IX is unlawful.
As goes Palatine, so goes the nation. The backlash to the federal guidelines precipitated by that case and others has been similarly swift and fierce. Social conservatives object that the federal government is interfering, overreaching.
For transgender students, though, the guidelines would seem to validate their struggle for equal rights. We suppose that like most contentious issues in American life, this one will ultimately be resolved in court. But the long arc of the moral universe appears to be bending toward justice for a class of citizens little understood and too often ignored.