Transgender Bathroom Accommodations Should Protect Everyone - The Truth Behind Title IX

Every person, child, or student should feel comfortable using the locker room or the restroom – regardless of gender identity.  That’s why the general public desires to accommodate transgender individuals in their gender identity selection.  So yes - access to proper and appropriate locker rooms and rest rooms should be given to transgender individuals.  At the same time there should that matching level of care and support afforded to those who do not identify as transgender who may wish a bit more privacy than sharing a locker room or dressing room with a person of the opposite gender would provide.  This debate is about the law, fairness, families and public safety.

 

Title IX, a landmark federal statute that prohibits sex discrimination in education, requires schools to protect all students from gender discrimination.  Originally designed to provide equal opportunities for female students, Title IX addresses discrimination against pregnant and parenting students and women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) programs. It also addresses sexual harassment, gender-based discrimination, and sexual violence. Sexual violence includes rape or sexual assault, sexual harassment, stalking, voyeurism, exhibitionism, verbal or physical sexuality-based threats or abuse, and intimate partner violence. Title IX protects all students from sexual harassment.  No student - transgender or not – should be sexually harassed. 

Title IX also works to hold schools accountable for every student’s safety.  Regarding bathroom accommodation, Title IX does not require schools to eliminate distinct facilities for boys and girls. Rather, it recognizes that there are privacy and safety concerns justifying those distinctions. It allows schools to “provide separate toilet, locker room, and shower facilities on the basis of sex” without committing sex discrimination, largely to protect from sexual harassment.  More specifically, Title IX characterizes the sense of discomfort that a student may feel as “a hostile sexual environment.”  All types of students can sense sexual hostility.  Some may prefer private changing rooms within the locker rooms where anyone – transgender or not – can have a bit more privacy if needed to feel comfortable.  This means a school may provide this accommodation by giving transgender students access to a private changing room but not necessarily the open locker room, or provide the private changing room for anyone who feels uncomfortable with an open locker room or restroom policy.  Title IX protects any person from sex-based discrimination, regardless of gender identity or expression.  The bottom line is that no federal law requires public schools to allow boys into girls’ restrooms or girls into boys’ restrooms. In fact, schools and school districts could be exposing themselves to legal liability for violating students’ privacy rights.

Fairness must be balanced with public safety. Many states have tried to address concerns for public safety in the wave of transgender lifestyle accommodations.  An innocent desire to accommodate those questioning their gender identity, however, could be manipulated by a predator taking advantage of that accommodation opportunity.  The protection of children ought to be at the heart of this issue.  It is painful to admit that there are deviant people in the world who will pretend to be transgender as a means of gaining access to the people they want to exploit, namely children.  According to the United States Department of Justice 99 percent of single-victim incidents are committed by males.  Consider how a female rape survivor would feel about being told she must share a bathroom with a man? According to the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, one in four girls will be sexually abused during childhood. Giving a predator masquerading as a transgender individual free access to girls and boys in the bathroom is unwise at best.  Because transgender identity is not well defined apart from an individual’s stated feelings, it can be manipulated by those interested in sexual contact with unwitting others. 

 

Families should know that no federal law requires public schools to allow boys into girls’ restrooms or girls into boys’ restrooms. In fact, schools and school districts could be exposing themselves to legal liability for violating students’ privacy rights.  Attorney Jeremey Tedesco, Regent University School of Law graduate and Senior Legal Counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom states, “Schools have a duty to protect the privacy, safety, and dignity of all students. No child should be forced into an intimate setting – like a bathroom or a locker room – with a child of the opposite sex.”  Schools can accommodate the desires of a small number of students without compromising the rights of all other students.  Any privacy and safety policy should respect all students and prevent students from being exposed to potential threats to their privacy and safety.

 

Sometimes in an effort to protect vulnerable minorities, laws may be applied to diminish or forget the need to protect family strength.  Transgender bathroom accommodation is an example that should work to protect everyone.

 

Additional Resources:

-         Know Your IX, http://knowyourix.org/title-ix/title-ix-the-basics/.

-         6 Myths About Allowing Transgender Students to Use Restrooms of the Opposite Sex, Alliance Defending Freedom, http://www.adflegal.org/detailspages/blog-details/allianceedge/2016/02/16/6-myths-about-allowing-transgender-students-to-use-restrooms-of-the-opposite-sex.

-         An Analysis of Rape and Sexual Assault, U.S. Dept. of Justice, http://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/SOO.PDF.

-         Child Sexual Abuse Fact Sheet, National Child Traumatic Stress Network, http://nctsn.org/nctsn_assets/pdfs/caring/ChildSexualAbuseFactSheet.pdf

-         A Christian Perspective on Gender Equality

Bathroom Laws to Protect Children from Predators

The North Carolina so-called “Bathroom Bill,” HB 2, the law that protects the privacy and safety of women and children, was voted on yesterday by the North Carolina House and Senate, who together were able to stop an attempt to overturn HB 2.  

The political aspects of this very important issue involved the incoming Gov. Roy Cooper, and NC lawmakers like Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger and Speaker of the House Tim Moore who chose to stand for common sense laws to protect children in bathroom use.  These were very important efforts that will better serve to protect children from predators in school restrooms and locker rooms.  The Family Policy Alliance was very involved in these events to protect children.
To learn more about this important area of law go to Transgender Accommodations Should Protect Everyone, and determine for yourself what is truly in the best interests of all children. 

California's Children Need Protection and Family Restoration

California passed into legislation a unique bill that affects all children in schools across the state because it forces public schools to allow gender-questioning youth to choose whether they would like to use the boys or girls restrooms and locker rooms based on their felt "gender identity." Now signed by the governor, AB 1266 also lets students who believe they are the opposite sex participate in sex-segregated activities, including sports teams. The new law would apply to students in elementary, middle and high school.

This legislation leaves all other children without recourse.  While states have a duty to protect children from harm, it seems that California's legislators are disregarding the safety and privacy of the majority of children in exchange for accommodating an extremely small segment of children.  Among the legislation's concerns is also the disregard for the privacy of students who are not transgender or gender-questioning.  General law-making considers notions that are based on principle, rather than on exception.  Making law based on exceptional circumstances to the general rule never proves to be wise lawmaking, and in this case, it may be harmful to most children.  You can read more on this issue here.

Furthermore, last week a particular example of the effects of this new legislation became apparent.  Teen girls are very negatively affected. Journalist Lori Arnold writes this summary on the event:

            The hot topic in recent weeks at Colorado’s Florence High School hasn’t been about calculus, history, English, college admissions or who the Huskies would face on their Friday night football games. Instead, the big news has centered on a transgendered student who, born male but perceiving himself as female, has been using the girls’ bathroom. The situation prompted a parental complaint to administrators, who responded that the boy’s rights as a transgendered student trump the privacy concerns of his peers. “This is a nightmare scenario for the teenage girls—some of them freshmen—and their parents at this school,” said Matthew McReynolds, a staff attorney with Sacramento-based Pacific Justice Institute (PJI). After being contacted by a Florence High School parent, McReynolds sent a letter to Principal Brian Schipper and Superintendent Rhonda Vendetti outlining the privacy rights of students. “This is exactly the kind of horror story we have been warning would accompany the push for radical transgender rights in schools, and it is the type of situation that LGBT activists have been insisting would not happen.” McReynolds said officials at the school, located near Pueblo, warned the complaining students they could be removed from sports teams or be charged with hate crimes if they persisted in voicing their opposition to the policy.

Read her entire article here.  Legislative efforts are underway to reverse the bill.

Gender equality does not have to up children in danger, or kick them off their sports teams for hate speech by voicing safety and fairness concerns.  Find out more about Christianity and Gender Equality by reading "Christianity, Feminism, and the Paradox of Female Happiness" and "A Christian Perspective on Gender Equality."  Marriage and children are inexorably linked to rebuilding strength within families.  Legislation can be helpful to those goals, or unhelpful to those objectives, as this piece of lawmaking evidences.

Virginia’s Self-Defense Law Lets Down the Battered Woman

 

This guest post is from Jordan Hodge, Regent Family Law student and 2021 winner of the Leroy Rountree Hassell Writing Competition for her article entitled "He Had It Coming: The Failure of Virginia’s Self-Defense Law When a Woman Defends Herself," to be published in the Regent University Law Review:

 

In Virginia, if you want to tell the court you acted in self-defense, you must prove two things: (1) you reasonably feared death or serious bodily injury, and (2) your attacker made an overt act that created imminent danger of that death or serious bodily injury.  This is all well and good for you and me generally.

 But this defense is incredibly difficult for a battered woman when she defends herself in a moment of relative calm.  She can show that she had reasonable fear for her life, but the overt act requirement poses an insurmountable obstacle for her if she defended herself while her batterer is sleeping, watching TV in between punches, or returning from a bathroom break.  Because she is not being attacked in that moment, she cannot show an overt act by her batterer and thus, she does not have a viable self-defense claim.

Virginia could make this defense accessible to a battered woman by requiring her to show that the circumstances surrounding her act would make a reasonable person in the battered woman’s position fear impending death or serious bodily injury.  This is still an objective standard to balance out the subjective reasonable fear element, but it takes into account everything that brought the battered woman to the point of self-defense and helps to dispel common myths about her.  Those myths include such explanations for her inaction of self-defense as “she wants to stay;” or “it must not be that bad if she doesn’t leave;” or “the battering will end if she just leaves.”  None of these are a truthful analysis of why battered women do not break the cycle of violence by leaving.

A battered woman is not crazy.  She does not wake up one day and calmly decide to take a life.  She is hurting, alone, and afraid.  She takes matters into her own hands because she believes she has no other choice.  A woman who has survived such trauma deserves to have her experiences included in her legal defense when she defends herself the only way she knows how.

Gender Identity Effects on Families

Gender dysphoria and the movement toward gender identity transition has hit families and children with a formidable force.  For years the biggest fallout from the growing transgender movement has been the debate over the use of private spaces, especially bathrooms and locker rooms, protection of which the Family Policy Alliance has been at the forefront.  Their work demonstrates that while that debate will continue, the demands are getting much broader. They look at recent events which reveal a stunning array of concerns related to the family:

1.      Assault: A kindergarten girl was recently assaulted in the girls' bathroom after a Georgia school allowed elementary school boys, who claim to have a transgender identity, into girls' bathrooms.

2.    Adult Entertainment in Educational Institutions: Libraries and schools across the country have drag queens, otherwise considered adult entertainment, to conduct children's story times.

3.     Keeping Information Secret from Parents: The New Jersey Department of Education recently directed schools to keep vital information about a child's gender identity secret from parents. When a parent has a disagreement with his or her child's gender identity choice, school staff are urged to review information on reporting child abuse by that parent against his or her child.

4.    Forced Intimate Services: A transgender-identifying man is suing a women's spa in Massachusetts for declining to give him a wax of his private body areas, using a court to force a female employee to provide intimate services to a man.

5.     Erasing Criminal Records: A man has sued to get a court to erase his criminal record. Now living life as a woman, he argues that his criminal conviction as a man discloses his gender identity change and is therefore unfair and discriminatory.

6.    Saving Money on Insurance: A man has admitted to lying by claiming to be a transgender female so that he could save money on car insurance.

The current federal government, however, has begun to pay attention to these concerns in three important areas: 

Prisons: The Federal Bureau of Prisons now averts placement of transgender inmates with the opposite biological sex to protect women from exposure to degradation, harassment, and assault.

Military: After intense study the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security have determined that admitting transgender-identifying individuals into the military was fundamentally unfair, cost prohibitive, and ultimately compromised the mission of the armed forces.
Schools: The current Department of Health and Human Services is working to make the law clear that sex is an unchangeable scientific fact.

These events reveal that a formidable movement toward national gender identity change is placing a great deal of pressure on children, parents, individuals and particularly families.  Informed families making good choices and parents who discuss these things with their children can make all the difference in handling these scenarios in the future.

Sexual Assault Investigation in Loudoun County Schools

 

This post is by Andrew Hull, Regent Law 3L, current Family Law student:

 

In May 2021, a then-14 year old male student sexually assaulted a female classmate in a school bathroom.  The assailant was arrested, yet was inexplicably allowed to continue attending Loudoun County schools.  He committed yet another sexual assault at a second school in October 2021.  

The unidentified offender, who is now 15 years old, has since been convicted in both assaults and was sent to a locked-down treatment center.  Upon completion of the court-imposed treatment program, he will remain on probation until he reaches the age of 18.  He will not be required to register as a sex offender.  For all the details see here.

The contrast between the obscene nature of these crimes and the arguably lenient sentence imposed can be debated another time.  But the lack of transparency in this matter on the part of Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) adds another layer of concern for parents and students alike.

It appears that LCPS at least made a pretense of figuring out what went wrong in how this situation was handled.  Indeed, LCPS announced in October 2021 that an independent investigation would take place.  Naturally, a report of the investigation's findings was created.  To date, it has yet to be released to the public.  What's more, LCPS has reportedly charged concerned parents, and others seeking answers, thousands of dollars to fulfill FOIA requests related to this matter.  

Parents and students in Loudoun County and across Virginia deserve answers, not recalcitrance.  LCPS withholding the report and charging exorbitant fees for FOIA requests related to the sexual assaults that necessitated it at least creates the appearance that something is amiss.  Whether there is remains to be seen.  Fortunately, the Office of the Attorney General has begun an investigation of its own, with the authorization of the Governor.  

Of course, that process will take time.  Tracking down the truth often does.  However, this is welcome news to anyone, particularly families with school-age children, who want to know why and how LCPS allowed this dangerous student to return to its schools where, sadly, he was able to strike again.

For Valentine's Day - A Title IX Shift in Protective Love

Alliance Defending Freedom posted this update on Title IV today, Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2017: Over the weekend, the Trump administration showed signs that it was moving towards protecting student privacy in public schools. Here's what you need to know about that. Here's how The Wall Street Journal describes the sign: "Newly instated U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has shown an early sign of backing away from an Obama administration initiative that directs schools to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms and locker rooms of the sex with which they identify.  The signal came in a Friday court filing from Justice Department lawyers withdrawing a request made last year by the Obama administration. That request came in response to a judge’s ruling in a lawsuit challenging federal guidance to states on accommodating transgender students." Here's the background: Last year, the Obama administration reinterpreted Title IX protections to include "gender identity," despite the federal law having been adopted explicitly to address inequities in education and sports based on biological sex. That led to a lawsuit filed in Texas to defend the privacy rights of students in public schools, which were placed in jeopardy. The federal government under the Obama administration, not surprisingly, defended its false reinterpretation until last week, when the new Trump administration dropped that defense in the Texas case. ADF Senior Counsel Gary McCaleb, Regent Law 1996, had this to say: "This is good news for the privacy, safety, and dignity of young students across America. The Obama Administration radically distorted a federal law that was intended to equalize educational opportunities for women and misused the law to place members of the opposite sex into students’ private facilities. Today, the Trump Administration took the first steps to end that error. It is only common sense to ensure privacy for all students by keeping boys out of girls' locker rooms and vice versa, and school officials shouldn’t have to fear losing crucial federal funding when they protect all students’ privacy. Respecting the real differences between boys and girls is right, because that protects the privacy, safety, and dignity of all students." It isn't clear at this point what this signals for cases regarding student privacy across the U.S., like the cases in Illinois and Virginia. We'll be certain to let you know how this impacts those cases, if it does.

To learn more see Trump drops Obama administration's transgender bathroom fight from the Catholic News Agency. 

Find out the truth about gender equality and authentic love - download A Christian Perspective on Gender Equality, 15 Duke J. Gender L. & Pol’y 339 (2008). Family restoration merits this positive, respectful, healthy perspective of love that balances gender, identity and protection.

The Assault on Parental Rights

 

The sacred bond between parent and child is recognized in America as a fundamental right for parents to direct the upbringing of their children.  This right is protected by the United States Constitution, and characterized by the Supreme Court of the United States as “perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests recognized by this Court.”  That right, however, is under assault.

My recent article, The Assault on Parental Rights from Covid to Life Support, details stories around the country of parents fighting to protect their children’s lives where they have been thwarted in doing so, from hospitals removing children from life support, to taking newborn babies from mothers testing positive for Covid-19 with a false positive, to parents fighting to protect children from bathroom assaults, to gender dysphoria instruction, to early exposure to sexual content. 

 

During the regular 2020 General Assembly session in Virginia, House Bill 580 (HB 580) was introduced that would have redefined “child abuse and neglect” to include any “mental harm inflicted by a parent due to a child’s sexual orientation or gender identity” to allow removal of a child from his or her home by the Virginia Department of Social Services. While the bill, failed its mere introduction is a harbinger of the sharp attack on parental rights that could take place in the upcoming Virginia legislative session.  A policy like this would have a crushing effect on parental rights, making it very difficult for parents to guide their children in very sensitive matters. Virginia already uses an anonymous sex text line called BrdsNBz sex text hotline managed by the Virginia Department of Health that encourages children to text about sex without their parents’ knowledge or consent. 

 

Parents – not politicians, unelected officials, nor schools – have the distinct privilege and responsibly to care for their children and to direct their health and education.  Parents should be able to do this without government institutions or third parties invading that special relationship between parents and their children. In the most recent election, Washington State became the very first state where the voters themselves made a decision on sex education approving Referendum 90 to uphold the state’s highly controversial mandatory public school sex-education curriculum – a curriculum that teaches kindergartners confusing messages about gender, promotes ideologies, and teaches older students things like “affirmative consent” for sexual activity. An example of how things like this are already happening in Virginia occurred at a high school in Albemarle County in 2018, when 14-year old freshman girls were required to watch sexually explicit “how-to” videos in a Family Life Education class.  In response to events like these, the Family Foundation of Virginia has created a Family Life Education Parent Resource Center, which provides parents with links to each school division’s website, parent portals, and links to any online curriculum that have already been made available. 

Family restoration means that it is a parents’ right and honor to have meaningful conversations with their children. That sacred bond with your kids is too precious to waste, or to allow to be under assault.