Trump administration issues new letter on transgender students
June 23, 2017
The Office for Civil Rights of the US Department of Education has issued an instruction stating that schools that fail to use transgender students’ “preferred names and pronouns” are committing harassment.
In 2016, the US Department of Justice and the US Department of Education told public schools that a 1972 civil rights law forbidding sex discrimination also applies to “gender identity.” Warning public schools that their federal funding at stake, the Obama administration made clear that its determination applied to restrooms, locker rooms, athletics, overnight accommodations on field trips, and school dances.
In February, the Trump administration withdrew the previous year’s directive.
The Trump administration’s new instruction states that this withdrawal “does not leave students without protections from discrimination, bullying or harassment.”
Harassment, according to the Trump administration’s instruction, includes:
acts of verbal, nonverbal, or physical aggression, intimidation, or hostility based on sex or sex-stereotyping, such as refusing to use a transgender student’s preferred name or pronouns when the school uses preferred names for gender-conforming students or when the refusal is motivated by animus toward people who do not conform to sex stereotypes of a transgender student created a hostile environment.
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Further information:
- DOE Issues New Instructions On Transgender Students' Rights Under Title IX (Religion Clause)
- US bishops welcome Trump’s decision to reverse Obama transgender rule (CWN, 2/27)
- Bishops: Obama administration’s transgender letter ‘deeply disturbing’ (CWN, 5/17/16)
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Posted by: [email protected] -
Jun. 25, 2017 2:31 PM ET USA
This is a dumb regulation which under most circumstances one can't follow or understand it. Use of all these names, non-names, and who knows what are being used to browbeat the rest of us who don't agree. Schools are supposed to be teaching students not playing political correctness games. We need to push back on this rule.
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Posted by: Jim Hanink -
Jun. 23, 2017 5:46 PM ET USA
Nonsense...perhaps no longer on stilts, but nonsense all the same.
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Posted by: feedback -
Jun. 23, 2017 1:02 PM ET USA
Schools have one purpose only: to teach, and not to become battlefield for political agendas. There are dedicated special schools for children with special needs where nobody's feelings get hurt.
