Emerging Leader Fellow Lizzy Wingfield is cited by the LNP Editorial Board for her insight into the protections that Title IX and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act afford transgender students.
In 2016, the Obama administration issued a guidance letter advising schools that Title IX required them to allow transgender students to use restrooms and locker rooms that accord with their gender identity. (Title IX is the federal law that protects students at federally funded schools from discrimination on the basis of sex.)
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos rescinded that guidance last year.
Education Law Center attorney Lizzy Wingfield told Geli that transgender students still are protected from discrimination under Title IX — and by the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act.
As Geli reported, “The latest case involving transgender students’ rights in Pennsylvania was decided in favor of Boyertown Area School District, which allowed transgender students to use the boys’ and girls’ locker rooms and restrooms aligned with their gender identity.”
The federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals found that “under the circumstances here, the presence of transgender students in the locker and restrooms is no more offensive to constitutional or Pennsylvania-law privacy interests than the presence of the other students who are not transgender.”
An appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court is pending.
