Federal civil rights officials reached an important settlement late last month with a California school district accused of discriminating against a transgender student by denying him equal access to educational programs and activities. Under the agreement, the Arcadia Unified School District in California will revise its policies and ensure that the student, who was born female but has since assumed a male name and identity, is treated fairly and like other male students. The agreement should be required reading for school officials at all levels nationally.
The case involved a child who was anatomically female but began to identify as a boy at an early age, assuming a male first name and wearing boys’ clothes. By the end of fifth grade, the student’s classmates accepted the transformation, but the school district would not let the matter go. Despite warnings from experts that the student should be treated as a boy in all settings, school officials singled him out in ways that brought unwanted attention and made the gender transformation much more difficult. He was given a separate dressing area for physical education class — which isolated him from friends — and assigned to a distant, cross-campus restroom, the use of which required him to miss class time.
On a camping trip in 2011, the social highlight of the seventh-grade year, the school district refused to let the student sleep in a cabin with male friends, some of whom knew his history, even though the friends had requested him as a cabin mate. He was forced instead to stay in a separate cabin with one of his parents, which both he and his parents found disheartening.
Just before the trip, his parents filed civil rights complaints with the Justice Department and the Department of Education. As the investigation progressed, the district agreed to make sure the student had access to facilities designated for male students at all district-sponsored activities and to revise its antidiscrimination policies so as to prohibit gender-based discrimination.
The agreement ends a painful episode for the student and his family. It may also be the beginning of a more welcoming future for transgender students.
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