It is a basic norm on ANY ISSUE, people of GOOD WILL reach accommodations in their own community. But now we have both sides politicizing making bathroom, locker room facilities available to transgender students, raising it to the highest levels of stakes, likely to go in the courts, way up in the courts.
The Obama administration, puts out a directive to public schools all over the country to make bathroom, locker room facilities available to transgender students.
In compliance with Title IX and other civil rights laws
The Justice Department and the Education Department, in guidance directed at every American public school district, admonished educators to treat transgender students consistent with their gender identity, regardless of what sex is listed on student records.
The guidance tells schools that they must take action to prevent harassment of students based on their identity as transgender, and that they cannot prevent trans students from using bathroom or locker room facilities that correspond with their gender identity.
If a school provides sex-segregated activities and facilities, “transgender students must be allowed to participate in such activities and access such facilities consistent with their gender identity,” the letter says. It adds that schools are not allowed to segregate based on “broad generalizations or stereotypes about the differences between transgender students and other students of the same sex.”
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, have also condemned the Obama administration's directive, calling on school districts to disregard the guidance.
"We will not sell out our children to the federal government," Patrick said. "And the people of Texas and the legislature will find a way to find as much of that money as we can if we are forced to. There is no compromise on this issue."
Texas K-12 schools receive $5 billion a year in federal funding, a third going toward providing meals for impoverished students, and a fifth of it for supporting students with disabilities. Patrick said he instructed superintendents not to adopt policies allowing trans students to use the single-sex facilities that match their gender identity, and insisted that "most" superintendents would not want to follow such a policy.
