Public schools ordered to allow transgender to use restrooms of choice

The Obama administration plans on Friday to order public schools to allow transgender students to use the bathroom with which they are most comfortable.

The administration is instructing schools across the country to permit students to choose their bathroom without restriction in reaction to a law passed in North Carolina requiring all transgender people to use the bathroom of the gender they were born.

“As is consistently recognized in civil rights cases, the desire to accommodate others’ discomfort cannot justify a policy that singles out and disadvantages a particular class of students,” wrote Catherine Lhamon, the assistant secretary of education for civil rights, and Vanita Gupta, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, in a letter to be released on Friday, The Washington Post reported.

The letter threatens to withhold funding from schools that force transgender people to use a bathroom other than the gender they identify themselves as, citing Title IX regulations prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded schools.

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