By Michael Fox
Over the past year, transgender individuals’ access to bathrooms, locker rooms, and other facilities has erupted as a divisive and sensationalized issue in political debates, statehouses, courts, and communities across the United States. Efforts to limit transgender people’s access to facilities that correspond with their gender identity have had a particular focus on public schools and universities, typically under the guise of protecting children.
To date, at least 18 state legislatures considered bills that would have restricted transgender students’ access to bathrooms, locker rooms, and other facilities not in accordance with their gender identity. When the state of North Carolina enacted a set of sweeping restrictions, the federal Department of Justice and Department of Education issued guidance clarifying that treating transgender students differently from other students constitutes sex discrimination under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. A number of states and state officials subsequently sued to challenge the Departments’ interpretation of Title IX, and state officials and school administrators in many places signaled they would not require schools to allow transgender students to access facilities in accordance with their gender identity. In, 2016, a federal judge in Texas issued a preliminary injunction blocking the federal guidance from taking effect nationwide while the lawsuit proceeds.
As these battles play out, transgender youth are struggling to meet basic physical needs in their school environments. For these students, being barred from facilities is not an abstract legal question, but a daily source of frustration and isolation. In an interview with Human Rights Watch in Texas, Tanya H., the mother of a nine-year-old transgender boy named Elijah, recalled: “A year ago at this time, he was having a really hard time, and he’d go into the girl’s bathroom and girls would yell, ‘There’s a boy in here!’ and he couldn’t go to the boys’ bathroom, and so he stopped going to the bathroom. There were a lot of meltdowns.” When Elijah mentioned suicide and was briefly hospitalized, his mother spoke to administrators to ensure that he would be treated as a boy when he started at a new school in the fall. Tanya recalled: “He was kind of worried about going to a new school, and he said, ‘If I can go as a boy, okay.’ He’s just fallen into it, and he’s so much happier.… He’s making friends who know him as a boy.” For Elijah and other transgender youth, access to bathrooms and locker rooms is an urgent issue that affects their safety, health, privacy, and ability to learn.
This report documents how restrictions on access to shared facilities directly affect transgender youth. From November 2015 to May 2016, researchers interviewed 74 current or former transgender students in Alabama, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, and Utah as part of a larger project on LGBT issues in US schools. The five states examined have not enacted sweeping restrictions like those of North Carolina. Yet in the absence of clear and inclusive nondiscrimination laws, policies at the school and school district level, and training for teachers and administrators, transgender students face access issues in these states as well.
The results of this research illustrate why restricting transgender students’ access to shared spaces is not only unnecessary, but discriminatory and dangerous. Barring transgender students from facilities that are safe, comfortable, and gender affirming is discriminatory, and that discrimination causes real harm. It places transgender students at heightened risk of harassment, assault, and bullying, impedes their ability to secure an education and participate fully in the life of their schools, and can cause damage to their physical and emotional health. Conversely, there is no evidence that allowing transgender students to choose bathroom or locker room facilities that correspond to their gender identity puts other students at risk. As the new school year begins, it is imperative that schools and school districts implement measures that advance the rights of all their students, regardless of their gender identity or expression.
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