Public schools should allow trandgender students to “use bathrooms matching their gender identity,” reports CNN on guidance to be issued later today by the Obama administration.
The announcement comes amid heated debate over transgender rights in schools and public life, which includes a legal standoff between the administration and North Carolina over its controversial House Bill 2. The guidance goes beyond the bathroom issue, touching upon privacy rights, education records and sex-segregated athletics, all but guaranteeing transgender students the right to identify in school as they choose.
“There is no room in our schools for discrimination of any kind, including discrimination against transgender students on the basis of their sex,” Attorney General Loretta Lynch said. “This guidance gives administrators, teachers and parents the tools they need to protect transgender students from peer harassment and to identify and address unjust school policies.”
It’s getting nasty out there, faster than I think anyone expected. Yesterday, one school district decided to permit students to carry weapons onto campus, with a school board member plainly suggesting they pepper spray transgender people who “follow” them into bathrooms.
The future, assumedly, seems to non-gendered bathrooms. It’s an interesting architectural, legal and space-efficiency problem: not every venue can just peel off and throw away the stickers.