Palatine School District Violated Transgender Student’s Rights: Federal Officials

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has ordered a taxpayer-funded school district in the suburbs of Chicago to allow a male transgender student who dresses like a girl and otherwise identifies as female to use the girls locker room and shower on school premises.

Cates spoke to The Associated Press one day after the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights declared the district in violation of federal law for offering the student only separate changing facilities.

For Township High School District 211, the line between accommodation and discrimination came down to this: whether the student would be able to choose to use the privacy curtains, or whether the school could force her to do so.

Cates contended that the “students in our schools are teenagers, not adults, and one’s gender is not the same as one’s anatomy”.

In a recent statement, Cates stressed the rights of every other female in the school district.

“The department of education’s decision makes clear that what my school did was wrong. I hope no other student, anywhere, is forced to confront this indignity”, she added. In mid-October the school district, with five high schools and two alternative high schools west of Chicago, defied the government, continuing to deny full locker-room access for the transgendered student.

In the letter recounting its findings, the Department of Education maintains that the school’s ongoing actions clearly represent the hallmarks of sex-based discrimination by “excluding Student A from participation in and denying her the benefits of its education program, providing services to her in a different manner, subjecting her to different rules of behavior, and subjecting her to different treatment on the basis of sex”.

In September, two hundred students at another school walked out over trans classmate using girls’ locker room.

Demoya Gordon, an attorney at Lambda Legal, which advocates for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, said the Palatine case was unusual for how vocal the school district had been.

When creating district policies on the issue, district leaders have been challenged by parents, students, and political groups who say issues related to transgender bathroom and locker room use threaten the privacy rights of other students. UB Law Associate Professor Michael Boucai says “It’s certainly an ironic reversal of what we’ve seen in past cases where it’s generally been a transgender student who argues that Title 9 entitles them to use the restroom that corresponds to their gender identity”. “We encourage the district to comply with the law and resolve this case”, said Lhamon.

The ADF letter explains that no federal law requires public schools to allow boys into girls’ restrooms or girls into boys’ restrooms.

In a personal statement released through the civil liberties group, the student said the ruling was not only important for her, but had far-reaching implications for other students and transgender people as well.

We celebrate and honor differences among all students and we condemn any vitriolic messages that dISParage transgender identity or transgender students in any way. Because the District refused to budge, lawyers for the ACLU filed a complaint for the parents with the Department of Education in December of that same year.

Aside from the questions of propriety and privacy, this ruling also seems to codify the idea that “transgender students” can compete on the sports teams designated for the opposite gender rather than their own birth gender.