Success: School Ordered to Halt Transphobic Policies

Target: Transgender Law Center Executive Director Kris Hayashi

Goal: Thank organization for its successful efforts in stopping a school from singling out a trans student with discriminatory policies.

A transgender boy forced to use the girl’s bathroom and locker room and generally isolated and singled out by transphobic policies has been successfully defended by this traumatizing treatment thanks to a ruling ordering his school’s discrimination to stop. Stories of this student being harassed by the administration and reports of a policy forcing trans students to wear identifying bracelets sparked his community and human rights activists across the nation, including those here on ForceChange, to take action.

Thanks to this support and the hard work of the Transgender Law Center, a federal court ruled that the Kenosha Unified School District must allow transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity rather than those that coincide with the gender they were assigned at birth. Now this student can go through Senior year without feeling isolated and unsafe.

“For the first time this year, I feel like I can actually make it through my senior year of high school just like any other boy in my class,” said the 17-year-old of the ruling. It’s wonderful that courts are beginning to recognize the emotional and psychological harm caused by transphobic policies that single out and police the identities of transgender children. Thank the Transgender Law Center for ensuring the safety and health of this student and others in the school district.

PETITION LETTER:

Dear Director Hayashi,

Your organization, the Transgender Law Center, recently won an important victory for a transgender student in Wisconsin. This boy had been enduring horrible treatment by his school’s administration as they singled him out for discriminatory treatment, including forcing him to use the girl’s bathroom and possibly making him and other trans students wear identifying bracelets so that staff could better mistreat them.

Kids across the nation have to fear using the bathroom in school–an action that should be perfectly ordinary. This puts both their emotional and physical health at risk, as you well know. Thanks to the efforts of organizations like the Transgender Law Center, more and more of these children can look forward to a safe and relatively normal school experience.

Thank you for all your hard work on this case. This victory gives hope to transgender students across the country and brings our nation closer to a truly equal and just state.

Sincerely,

[Your Name Here]

Photo credit: Women’s eNews