Governor’s transgender plans backed

RICHMOND, Va. — Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s new model policies for the treatment of transgender students are in line with federal and state nondiscrimination laws and school boards must follow their guidance, the state’s attorney general said in a nonbinding legal analysis released Thursday.

“The Model Policies ensure that all students are treated with dignity and that parental involvement remains at the center. These policies are fully compliant with the law, and school boards across the Commonwealth should support and implement them,” Attorney General Jason Miyares, also a Republican, said in a statement.

The advisory opinion from Miyares comes as a growing number of school boards across the state are responding to the administration’s guidelines, which were finalized last month after a lengthy review and address issues ranging from athletics to pronoun use in the classroom.

The guidelines, which under state law are supposed to offer something of a road map for local school districts fashioning their own policies, roll back many accommodations for transgender students urged by the previous Democratic administration. They have won praise from conservative and religious groups and sparked criticism from Democrats and LGBTQ advocates.

Some school boards in red-leaning areas of the state have begun to adopt policies consistent with the governor’s. Others, mostly in blue areas, have said they plan to defy them.

Fairfax County Public Schools — the state’s largest district — recently told parents it had no plans to change its guidelines for transgender students, which do not align with Youngkin’s.

A similar dynamic, in political reverse, played out under previous Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam’s administration. The Department of Education told local districts at the time that they assumed “all legal responsibility for noncompliance” and did not track which divisions were meeting the standards, the Virginia Mercury reported at the time.

Youngkin has made the case in recent public appearances that school boards have no choice but to fall in line. But he has declined to say exactly what tools his administration thinks it has to attempt to get noncompliant districts on board. The 2020 state law that led to the creation of the model policies is silent on enforcement.

Jason Miyares