California School Officials Debunk Right-Wing Lies About Transgender Student Law
Blog ››› ››› LUKE BRINKER
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Evidence continues to mount that a new California law allowing transgender public school students to use the restroom facilities that correspond to their gender identity is being implemented successfully without causing the "anarchy and madness" predicted by right-wing media figures.
On January 1, California's recently enacted School Success and Opportunity Act went into effect, requiring public schools to allow transgender students to have access to facilities and extracurricular activities that correspond to their gender identity. A right-wing coalition aims to overturn the law in a November referendum, but an initial signature count suggested that the repeal campaign won't have sufficient signatures to put the law up for a vote. California officials have until February 24 to complete a signature-by-signature count.
Following passage of the law, right-wing media figures issued apoplectic predictions of bathroom harassment and inappropriate behavior, warning that students would pretend to be transgender in order to sneak into opposite-sex bathrooms.
Equality Matters contacted officials from a number of California's largest school districts to determine whether the right-wing horror stories about transgender students had come true in the first month of the law's implementation. Unsurprisingly, none of the school districts reported incidents of harassment or inappropriate behavior, with several pledging to continue accommodating transgender students even if the law is repealed in a referendum.
Los Angeles Unified School District
With 662,140 students enrolled in the 2011-2012 school year, the Los Angeles Unified School District educates more than one in 10 of all the students enrolled in California public schools. The School Success and Opportunity Act is hardly uncharted territory for the district, which began implementing trans-affirmative policies nearly a decade ago.
During that time, there hasn't been a single incident of bathroom misbehavior, according to Dr. Judy