Trump to roll back Obama-era protections for transgender students: report
esident Donald Trump's White House will undo an Obama administration policy that allowed transgender students in the nation's public schools to be called by their preferred names and pronouns and use restrooms, locker rooms and other single-sex facilities matching their gender identity. The announcement from the Trump administration was expected to come Tuesday and marks the beginning of his second month in office during which the GOP leader has targeted immigrants, Syrian refugees, abortion access and travelers from some Muslim-majority nations.
“This is the first day of the president’s second month in office and he is now fully coming after LGBT people,” Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, told the Washington Blade. “I’m angry; I’m outraged. This is about kids who just want to go to school who just want to be themselves... it’s just outrageous that he go after trans kids this way.”
Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement to the Washington Blade that the Trump administration's record so far on transgender student rights was “deeply disappointing.”
Former President Barack Obama's Education and Justice Departments approved the non-binding guidelines on transgender student rights in May, warning that schools practicing sex discrimination in violation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 could lose federal funding. “A school may not require transgender students to use facilities inconsistent with their gender identity or to use individual-user facilities when other students are not required to do so,” officials from the Education and Justice Departments said in a letter at the time.
Several Republican-leaning state governments led by Texas sued the federal government over the policy and U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has signaled that he will not defend the Obama guidelines. Trump had pledged last year to strike down the guidelines on the Trump to roll back Obama-era protections for transgender students: report: