Obama guidelines to schools on transgender bathrooms revoked
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s administration yesterday 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Trump, a Republican who took office last month, rescinded those guidelines, even though they had been put on hold by a federal judge, arguing that states and public schools should have the authority to make their own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 election.
A couple of 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.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the administration was pressed to act now because of the pending US Supreme Court case, GG v 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. — Reuters