Facing pressure from the U.S. Department of Education, a South Carolina school district has agreed to allow a transgender student to use the bathroom of her choice and will revise its policies to bar discrimination based on gender identity.
The department’s Office of Civil Rights found that Dorchester County School District Two, located outside of Charleston, violated the rights of the transgender student — who was born male and now identifies as a girl — when it barred her from using the girls’ bathroom. The federal agency concluded that the district violated Title IX, which bars discrimination on the basis of gender in public schools.
As part of an agreement with the government, Dorchester County school officials will allow the student to use the girls’ bathroom and, if the girls’ family requests it, establish a support team to ensure she has access to all programs and activities at school.
School districts that defy the Office of Civil Rights risk losing their federal funding; faced with that prospect, most districts agree to do what federal officials ask of them. In 2013, the Education Department found a California school district in violation of Title IX for requiring a transgender boy to change clothes and use the bathroom in the nurse’s office. In 2015, the Education Department told an Illinois school district that it was violating the law by denying a transgender girl access to the girls’ locker room. Palatine Township High School District 211 eventually allowed the girl to use the locker room.
The Obama administration in May issued a guidance letter directing schools to permit students to use bathrooms that align with their gender identity. The administration’s position was sharply rebuked by officials in eleven states, who filed a lawsuit calling the guidance an overreach of the administration’s authority. A group of Illinois students, including some from Palatine Township High School, have filed a similar lawsuit against the Obama administration.
The parents of the student in Dorchester County said that though she was born a boy, she “never exhibited male traits” and began wearing dresses to school. Teachers agreed to refer to her by her new name in the classroom, but school officials would not allow her to use the girls’ bathroom and forced her to use a private restroom instead.
“This embarrassed the student because she was forced to separate from her friends, who would often request to accompany her to the restroom, and because it required the student to address questions from her classmates about why she was using a different restroom,” officials wrote in the findings letter.
School bathrooms have become the latest frontier in the fight for LGBTQ rights, and the debate over how to accommodate transgender students in school bathrooms has spurred a flurry of lawsuits and state laws requiring people to use bathrooms that align with the sex listed on their birth certificate. The Obama administration in May made its position clear in a guidance letter, directing schools to allow students to use bathrooms according to their gender identity or lose federal funds. The letter sparked backlash and a lawsuit by 11 states seeking to undo the guidance.
