As expected, the ACLU has taken legal exception to the new policy adopted by the Gloucester County School Board which required that restrooms and locker rooms would be limited to those of the corresponding biological sex assigned at birth. The policy required that transgender students use "alternative private facilities."
The policy was sparked by the existence of trans boy Gavin Grimm, 15, and the fact that he had been using the boy's restroom since October.
The ACLU filed a complaint last Thursday with the US Justice and Education departments urging that students like Gavin deserve to be accepted as the gender they identify with and that requiring them to use alternate restroom facilities is unfair discrimination.
Sine the passage of the policy, Gavin has been using the nurse's bathroom...and getting called a "freak."
The reason for the passage of the policy is ostensibly to stop infringing on the privacy of the non-transgender students.
I use the private nurses’ bathroom exclusively, because using a unisex bathroom is humiliating. I think that working with the community and getting the story out there is important. I don’t know if what I’m doing will change my community, but it doesn’t matter. This is a legal violation.
--Gavin said, noting that he has become outspoken on the issue because he doesn’t want other transgender students to likewise suffer
Joshua Block, a staff attorney for the ACLU’s national LGBT project, said that while some states have instituted laws of varying degrees to protect transgender students’ ability to use a bathroom of the gender with which they identify, “sometimes it’s fear and stigma on a school-board level” that needs to be addressed.
Block said that offering "alternative" bathrooms is a step forward, but he argues that unless schools remove all traditional bathrooms, it’s not a complete, fair solution. Block said transgender students just want to be treated equally.
In other words, what the new policy does is promote institutionalized "othering."
There’s an unfortunate attempt to raise the specter that somehow this affects the privacy of other students. These are just kids who are trying to go to the bathroom like anyone else. It’s unfortunate that they are demonizing them.
Finally, there are young people who have words to put with the feelings that they’ve had. They’re starting to have role models and language that they can use to identify what those feelings are.
--Beth Panilaitis, who directs a central Virginia support group for LGBT youth
With the exception of Kimberly Hensley, the lone member of the school board to vote against the new policy, the ACLU has heard nothing from the school board.
A lot of people are confused about what it means to be transgendered [sic], and that’s why education is so key. Being transgendered [sic] is not a girl going into a boy’s bathroom. It’s someone who identifies as a boy going into the boy’s bathroom. It’s just someone living their life.
--Hensley
THa ACLU complaint argues that the school board has violated Title IX of the United States Education Amemndments on 1972:
No person in the United States shall, on the basis of gender, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.
As a practical matter, the ‘biological gender’ policy at [Gloucester County Public Schools] significantly interferes with the ability of Gavin and other transgender students to fully participate in daily school activities because it singles out transgender students for different treatment and forces them to travel to separate facilities which are often further away and inconveniently located whenever they have to use the restroom.
Although Grimm is prepared to be the center of public discussion, some of the discourse thus far been unkind, according to the letter directed to the education section of the Dept. of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. The school board meeting on Dec. 9 included public testimony that called Grimm “a girl” and “a freak.”
Indeed,” the complaint goes on, “the stigmatizing policy breeds or fosters gender-stereotype-based hostility toward Gavin from his peers, which [the school district] has an obligation to protect him from instead of encouraging.
--ACLU complaint
When a school district accepts federal funds, it does so on the condition of following federal laws. I truly believe we are in violation of Title IX and at risk of losing our federal funding.
--Hensley, who is also an attorney
Consigning transgender students to segregated bathrooms prevents them from participating in school activities on an equal basis and causes exclusion and isolation.
--Rebecca Greenberg, ACLU Virginia
Alliance Defending Freedom has offered to defend the policy in any legal action.
No federal law requires schools to treat their bathrooms, locker rooms, or showers as genderless facilities. Indeed, the idea that reserving a girl’s locker room for girls violates Title IX is a tortured reading of the law.
--Jeremy Tedesco, ADF
But then, the naming of his group as Alliance Defending Freedom is a tortured use of the word "Freedom."
I am not afraid at all. I am not afraid of any discourse within the community. My hope is that as a result of this complaint, there will be a formal policy within Gloucester County Public Schools that protect the rights of transgender students.
--Gavin Grimm