Tag: G.G. v Gloucester County

The Social Issue of Transgender Bathrooms

Any time a controversial social issue comes to the fore, it brings along with it a variety of opinions that become so heated that rational thought becomes blurred.

The question of transgender bathrooms in Horry County schools has exploded into such an issue. The debate on this potent issue includes public fears, religious morality and political involvement.

At one time, this type of dilemma would not have been on anyone’s agenda as to many it is a non-issue. However, right now it is a hot topic as the controversial transgender bathroom is getting public and media attention no one thought possible.

Two days ago the Horry County School Board passed a resolution to say the administration would follow the law as it now stands (allowing transgender students to use the bathroom of the gender with which they identify or a private bathroom, whichever they prefer).

The school board also passed a motion to file an amicus curiae brief in support of the Gloucester (VA) County School Board, the agency in the middle of a lawsuit on transgender bathroom use.

Parents of non-transgender students continue to question the morality and safety of the decision. Parents of transgender students worry about the safety and stigmatization of their children.

For the reader…If you want to be a compassionate individual, try having a person’s anxiety who has a transgender body and their torment. Imagine the turmoil of how they feel trapped within a body they don’t want to have, but are not able to fully be the one they want to be. It is a self-torturing conundrum to have, trying to break loose from a feeling of frustration to one of freedom. For them it must be a joy to be able to use the bathroom of the gender they identify with.

On the other side of the coin, is the moral consciousness of people who believe such a decision is immoral and sacrilegious to the core of morality. To them, crossing over from one gender to another is blasphemous.

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In the Center of the Transgender Storm – Update

The Horry County School Board is trying to work its way out of the center of a transgender storm regarding bathroom usage in schools.

After the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals recorded a 2-1 decision in the case of G.G. v. Gloucester (VA) County recently, a student who had been suspended for one day for using a school bathroom not of the student’s “birth-assigned sex” threatened to sue Horry County Schools.

The student is represented by the Transgender Law Center of California, which sent a letter to the school district threatening the law suit.

Just in the last several days, Horry County School Board members and Superintendent Rick Maxey received an email with two attachments from an attorney of the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Scottsdale, Arizona headquartered organization with a branch in Georgia.

The subject of the email is: “Schools Are Not Legally Required to Allow Students to Use Opposite-Sex Restrooms, Showers, and Changing Rooms.”

One of the email attachments “explains the recent decision in the case of G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board and dispels the myth that, following the decision, schools are required to allow students to use the restrooms of the opposite sex,” according to the email.

My first thought was why do a law center based in California and a non-profit organization headquartered in Arizona want to get involved in Horry County?

My second thought, an answer to the first, was so that these two organizations can bring their causes into the national spotlight, using Horry County to test the Fourth Circuit ruling. You know, the old 15 minutes of fame or, in this case, maybe 15 years of fame for these organizations.

Do we want our school board to get in the middle of a national legal fight over transgender rights, equal protection, Title IX, discrimination and the like or do we want them concentrating on educating our children?

Remember, any public money spent on fighting lawsuits is money taken away from our children’s education. And we certainly don’t want to have to raise taxes just to be the center of national media attention.

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Transgender Bathroom Issues Hit Horry County Schools

(Above Shanda Allen with husband Al Allen)

Over the past 48 hours, Horry County has literally exploded in comments about transgender bathroom usage in Horry County Schools.

The Horry County School Board has been the focus of this deluge of communications, mostly by parents opposing transgender students being allowed to use the bathroom of their choice.

Last week, a three judge panel at the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a 2-1 decision, in G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board, that a Virginia school discriminated “on the basis of sex” in violation of Title IX when it barred “G.G.,” a “transgender boy” (a girl who identifies as a boy) from using the boys’ restroom.

Previously, the school had allowed the student to use either the girls’ bathroom or one of the school’s single stall bathroom units created by the school to accommodate transgender students, but open to usage by all students.

Forcing the student to use a common area bathroom with a gender she didn’t identify with or to use a special single stall bathroom was determined discriminatory by the panel of judges.

The Horry County School Board faces the same type of situation with a transgender boy who was suspended from school for using the boys’ bathroom.

After the suspension, Horry County Schools was notified in a letter from the Transgender Law Center that it faced a lawsuit if students were denied usage of the bathroom of the gender with which they identify and live as on a daily basis.

Earlier this week, Horry County Schools released a statement, “The District maintains the privacy of all of its students. The District seeks to accommodate the individual needs of its transgender students in compliance with the law, including Title IX. We will continue our efforts to ensure a welcoming school environment for all students.”

That statement opened a deluge of communications from parents concerned with the idea of students of one gender using the bathroom of the opposite gender regardless of the gender with which the individual identifies himself or herself.

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