You’ve no doubt read about the Department of Education’s latest step backward away from equal rights.
it's the agency's position that restroom-related complaints from trans students are not covered under the law.
Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, not gender identity.
--Liz Hill, Education Department spokesperson
Those opposed to the current anti-education cabal have not been silent.
It is worth noting that a number of federal courts have found that bans on sex discrimination do cover gender identity, in contradiction to Hill's assertion. And while the Education Department's statement doesn't actually change the law, it has the potential to embolden anti-trans bullies and to encourage districts to flout the court rulings.
She {DeVos] sat across the table from our family and two other families and expressed deep concern over the well-being of transgender students, like my daughter Ellie. She looked me in the eyes and assured me she had my daughter’s safety in mind. However, today’s actions make it clear DeVos’ Department of Education has no desire to protect Ellie or the thousands like her.
--Vanessa Ford
Barring a student from using the facilities that align with their gender identity is discrimination.
If a transgender girl is forced to use the boys’ room at school, it places their safety and well-being in jeopardy. This denies her basic right to a public education. This administration continues to fail to protect our most vulnerable students.
--Katherine Prescott, mother of transgender suicide victim
Those numbers [rates of self-harm] are a result of seeing no possible path to grow a life, not the result of hating one’s genderl. If I can’t use the facilities in elementary school, how am I going to get to college? Hold a job? Get an apartment? Find friends and loved ones? If my teachers won’t take a stand for me, who will? These are the questions constantly confronted.
--Jaime M. Grant, PFLAG
When you turn your back on transgender students merely trying to get through the school day, you're undermining their ability not just to succeed academically, but to pursue their dreams, and that has a lifetime worth of consequences.
If you're not part of the transgender community, you are likely part of some community that this administration has fought to undermine access to a quality education for. When they attack transgender students, it also makes it easier to attack students with disabilities and survivors of sexual assault, and certainly those at the intersection of all of those identities.
--Sarah McBride, HRC
The transgender population is larger than most people ever realize. But even if you want to brush it off as a small community, nobody should have to live in fear of being denied the ability to meet basic physical needs at school.
One way I try to explain this to cisgender people is by asking them to think about one thing that made you different in grade school, then imagine that core aspect of yourself being debated, attacked, and demonized in a public forum. Then imagine going back to school to facing your peers day after day while this is happening.
--MJ Okma, GLAAD
I should point out, to those who object to being referred to as "cisgender," the word only means "not transgender." It is not an identity...it's the absence of a particular identity.
Be the heart that Betsy DeVos clearly lacks and step up and speak out for transgender students. The policies impacting trans students aren't just made in Washington, they're made in state capitals and in school boards and city halls across the country.
We need people to vote, not just in presidential elections or midterm elections, but in school board elections and [local] elections. Those institutions can and should step in to support trans students if they're not already.
--McBride