Washington - President Donald Trump's administration
on Wednesday revoked landmark guidance to public schools letting
transgender students use the bathroom of their choice, reversing
a signature initiative of former Democratic President Barack
Obama.
Obama had instructed public schools last May to allow
transgender students to use the bathrooms matching their chosen
gender identity, threatening to withhold funding for schools
that did not comply. Transgender people hailed it as victory for
their civil rights.
Trump, a Republican who took office last month, rescinded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 Justice and Education departments will continue to study
the legal issues involved, according to the new, superseding
guidance that will be sent to public schools across the country.
Reversing the Obama guidelines stands to inflame passions in
the latest conflict in America between believers in traditional
values and social progressives, and is likely to prompt more of
the street protests that followed Trump's Nov. 8 election.
A couple hundred people gathered in front of the White House
to protest the Republican president's action, waving rainbow
flags and chanting: "No hate, no fear, trans students are
welcome here." The rainbow flag is the symbol of lesbian, gay,
bisexual and transgender, or LGBT, people.
"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, 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,"
said Paxton, a Republican.
Transgender legal advocates have criticized the "states'
rights" argument, saying federal law and civil rights are
matters for the federal government to enforce, not the states.
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.
Although the Justice Department is not a party in the case,
it typically would want to make its views heard. The Trump
administration action on Wednesday also withdrew an Education
Department letter in support of Grimm's case.
"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.
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".
The courts are likely to have the final say over whether
Title IX covers transgender students. The Supreme Court could
pass on that question in the Virginia case and allow lower
courts to weigh in, or go ahead and decide what the law means.
Obama's Education Department undertook the guidance in
response to queries from school districts across the country
about how to accommodate transgender students in
gender-segregated bathrooms.
The Obama administration guidance also covered a host of
other issues, such as the importance of addressing transgender
students by their preferred names and pronouns and schools'
responsibility to prevent harassment and bullying of transgender
children.
Thirteen states led by Texas sued to stop the Obama
guidelines, and a US district judge in Texas temporarily
halted their full implementation.
The White House previously boasted of Trump's support for
LGBT rights, noting in a January 31 statement that he was the first
Republican presidential nominee to mention the community in his
nomination acceptance speech.
"Revoking the guidance shows that the president's promise to
protect LGBT rights was just empty rhetoric," James Esseks,
director of the American Civil Liberties Union's LGBT project,
said in a statement.