Feds say Illinois school district broke law by banning transgender student from girls’ locker room
Around the country, high schools are increasingly confronting a thorny issue: Should transgender students be allowed into the locker room?
And increasingly, the federal government is stepping in to provide an answer: Schools must give trans students full locker room access.
Or else.
On Monday, the Obama administration again weighed in on the issue with the release of a report slamming a suburban Chicago public school district for not providing a transgender student with access to the girls’ locker rooms.
The report, which caps a two-year investigation, found that Township High School District 211 in Palatine, Ill., unfairly denied the transgender teenager — who was undergoing hormone therapy but had not undergone gender reassignment surgery — access to school facilities in violation of Title IX, that bars discrimination in federally funded education programs, causing her “isolation,” “ostracism” and at least one “tearful breakdown.”
“The denial of access has also meant that, in order to satisfy her graduation requirements and receive a high school diploma, Student A has had no other option but to accept being treated differently than other students by the District,” according to the 14-page report from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR).