US President Donald Trump’s administration on Wednesday revoked landmark guidance to public schools letting transgender students use the bathrooms of their choice, reversing a signature initiative of former president Barack Obama.
Reversing the Obama guidelines stands to inflame passions in the latest conflict in the US between believers in traditional values and social progressives, and is likely to prompt more of the street protests that followed Trump’s election on Nov. 8 last year.
Obama had instructed public schools in May last year to let transgender students use the bathrooms matching their chosen gender identity, threatening to withhold funding for schools that did not comply. Transgender people hailed the step as victory for their civil rights.
Photo: Reuters
Trump, a Republican who took office last month, rescinded those guidelines, even though they had been put on hold by a federal judge, arguing that states and public schools should have the authority to make their own decisions without federal interference.
The US departments of justice and education will continue to study the legal issues involved, according to the new, superseding guidance that will be sent to public schools.
About 200 people gathered in front of the White House to protest against Trump’s action, waving rainbow flags and chanting: “No hate, no fear, trans students are welcome here.”
“We all know that Donald Trump is a bully, but his attack on transgender children today is a new low,” said Rachel Tiven, chief executive of Lambda Legal, which advocates for LGBT people.
Conservatives such as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican who spearheaded the lawsuit challenging the Obama guidance, hailed the Trump administration action.
“Our fight over the bathroom directive has always been about former president Obama’s attempt to bypass Congress and rewrite the laws to fit his political agenda for radical social change,” he said.
Transgender legal advocates have criticized the “states’ rights” argument, saying federal law and civil rights are matters for the federal government to enforce.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the administration was pressed to act now because of the pending US Supreme Court case, G.G. versus Gloucester County School Board.
That case pits a Virginia transgender boy, Gavin Grimm, against officials who want to deny him use of the boys’ room at his high school.
“I’ve faced my share of adversaries in rural Virginia. I never imagined that my government would be one of them. We will not be beaten down by this administration,” Grimm, 17, told the protest outside the White House.
The federal law in question, known as Title IX, bans sex discrimination in education, but it remains unsettled whether Title IX protections extend to a person’s gender identity.
US Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement that the Obama guidelines “did not contain sufficient legal analysis or explain how the interpretation was consistent with the language of Title IX.”
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman vowed to ensure Title IX and his state’s civil rights protections are enforced.
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