Superintendent Linda Dwight told the School Committee this week that a recent federal policy reversal on protections for transgender students would not affect students here, because Massachusetts has its own law banning discrimination against transgender people.
Last week, the Trump administration withdrew federal legal protection from transgender students in public schools, saying Title IX’s ban on sex discrimination did not necessarily include those students, as the Obama administration had asserted it did. The interpretation of Title IX is scheduled to come before the U.S. Supreme Court in a case later this month. The main focus of debate has been on whether transgender students can use restrooms and locker rooms for the gender they identify with, or if they can be required to use facilities for the sex on their birth certificates.
In 2011 Massachusetts passed a law including gender identity—along with race, color, sex, religion, national origin, and sexual orientation—as a category protected against discrimination in the public schools. A 2016 law extended that protection to public accommodations, including restrooms.
Under that law, the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education directs schools to allow students to access restrooms, locker rooms, and changing facilities that correspond to their gender identity. The policy guidelines note that some transgender students may choose instead to use a single “unisex” restroom or the nurse’s room. “Those options are already offered at Bromfield and meet the students’ needs,” Dwight said.
However, a ballot measure rescinding the 2016 Massachusetts law has already been certified for a referendum in the November 2018 state election, Dwight told the School Committee.
