Texas, among a dozen of other states, have plans to ask a federal judge in Fort Worth to put a stop to to the Obama administration’s policies in regard to transgender bathroom use in public places, specifically public schools.
The directive, released in May 2016, gave recommendations, allowing for transgender students to use bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity.
While these recommendations have no true force of law, schools were all faced with one decision: to implement the policies or lose federal funding.
“Defendants have conspired to turn workplaces and educational settings across the country into laboratories for a massive social experiment, flouting the democratic process, and running roughshod over commonsense policies protecting children and basic privacy rights,” says the complaint.
Arguing that they could lose billions in federal funding for failing to comply, the states involved, further including Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, Wisconsin, and West Virginia, state that the Obama administration has “quietly been in enforcement mode at a micro level, sowing the seeds for macro results.”
“Plaintiffs have identified no enforcement action threatened or taken against them as a result of defendants’ interpretations,” reads the U.S Justice Department’s filing before Friday’s [August 12, 2016] hearing. “Nor have they established that the guidance documents have any binding legal effect.”
While the debate has been hot for months now, the issue of bathroom rights is less of a political struggle for many, and hits home for many parents, including Kim Shappley, the mother of five-year old Kai, who has identified as a girl since the age of three.
“Please understand I’m not fighting about bathrooms, I’m fighting about her life, I’m fighting about her well-being, I’m fighting for her happiness, I’m fighting for her future,” Shappely said in a statement directed towards the northern Texas school district that insists children use the restroom that corresponds with the gender on their birth certificate.
The Pearland Independent School District has said that Shappley’s daughter can use the gender neutral restrooms available in the kindergarten classes.