WASHINGTON (AP) – Hundreds of parents across the country have called on President Donald Trump to embrace Obama-era protections for transgender students that allow them use to school bathrooms in accord with their gender identity.
In a letter sent to the president by the Human Rights Campaign late Tuesday, more than 780 parents stressed that “all students deserve equal access to a safe, welcoming school and a high quality education no matter who they are.”
The call follows a decision by the Trump administration last week to abandon a defense of the guidelines that had been issued by the Obama administration. A court issued an injunction against those guidelines last summer in response to a lawsuit filed by 13 states. President Barack Obama appealed the injunction, but the Trump administration decided to back off from that appeal.
Parents of transgender students say that revoking the right of students to use school bathrooms according to their gender identity amounts to discrimination and creates a hostile learning environment for transgender students. “These policies are wrong, they hurt our children, and they violate the principle of equal education,” the letter said.
Vanessa Ford, an education activist in Washington, D.C., whose 5-year-old daughter Ellie is transgender, said that forcing her to use one-stall individual bathrooms – which are usually located in the nurse’s office – or the boys’ bathroom would cause her pain.