The Pennridge board has passed a bathroom policy that advocates say discriminates against transgender students

Sep 06, 2023

The Pennridge School Board has passed a policy requiring that students use group bathrooms in line with their sex, rather than gender identity — a mandate legal advocates said discriminates against transgender students.

The policy, which the board approved in a 7-1 vote Wednesday, says that "no person shall enter a restroom, locker room, or shower that is designated for the use of the opposite sex." That prohibits transgender students from using bathrooms that correspond with their gender identities.

The policy is "extremely concerning," Kristina Moon, senior attorney with the Education Law Center in Pennsylvania, said in an interview Thursday. She said the policy appeared to violate federal civil rights law prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity, as well as the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act.

Alex Domingos, an advocacy and policy strategist with the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, said the ACLU believes "that the policy is illegal and, just as importantly, harmful to trans and nonbinary students."

A number of community members voiced concern about the policy — while some others applauded it — during a heated meeting Wednesday night that featured broader pushback toward the board, including over its recent hiring of a consultant tied to the conservative Hillsdale College in Michigan.

Parents and residents rallied before the meeting and confronted the board during public comment, prompting leaders to call a recess and threaten to remove people whose remarks didn't pertain to agenda items.

Some critics saw the bathroom policy as yet another action they believed was driven more by the politics of the Republican board than educational goals.

"The board has been very clear over the last few years of the direction they’re going in," said Adrienne King, a Pennridge parent and former Democratic candidate for the board, who had advocated for the diversity, equity and inclusion program that the district scrapped last year.

Members of the district's LGBTQ community are "deeply impacted by this," King said. She said that "putting trans students in a position where they have to reveal their birth identity in order to use the bathroom, that deeply concerns me."

Under the Pennridge policy, students must use either a multiuser bathroom corresponding to their sex assigned at birth, or a single-user facility.

For locker rooms, the policy allows students to request "a reasonable alternative changing area such as the use of a private area," but "that notably still has to be in the locker room corresponding to sex assigned at birth," said Domingos, of the ACLU.

He added that the policy also raised the question of how many single-user bathrooms Pennridge has: Having many "doesn't eliminate the exclusion problem," but having only a few would make it worse, Domingos said.

A spokesperson for the district declined to comment Thursday on allegations the policy discriminates against transgender students, pointing a reporter to the recording of Wednesday's meeting.

No board members spoke in favor of the policy during the meeting. The only comments came from the lone member to vote against it, Ron Wurz, who said that "the most likely outcome of passing this will be legal action against the district."

Moon, the Education Law Center attorney, said federal court decisions in Pennsylvania had made clear that schools must allow students to use locker rooms and restrooms that align with their gender identity. She noted that the U.S. Supreme Court in 2019 rejected an appeal from a conservative legal organization representing students in Boyertown, who opposed a district policy accommodating transgender students.

The law is "well settled in Pennsylvania," Moon said, also noting regulatory changes by the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission making clear that discrimination based on gender identity is not permitted.

While a federal court in Atlanta in December ruled that a transgender boy was not allowed to use the boys’ bathroom in a public high school in Florida, that case has not been appealed to the Supreme Court, Moon said.

Several people who addressed the board praised its approach to the issue. "My opinion, you’re either born a girl, or you’re born a boy. It's pretty simple science," one man said. Another said that "that's why the bathrooms have different plumbing, because the people using them have different plumbing."

Pennridge last year directed teachers to remove Pride flags and other "advocacy" materials from classrooms, a move that the Education Law Center and ACLU warned would disproportionately harm LGBTQ students.

Addressing the school board Wednesday, a young woman who said she had graduated in 2022 said its policies "have failed to protect my fellow members of the queer community," and that "many of my friends can't even use the bathroom that matches their gender identity."

One woman, a retired teacher who said she was part of the LGBTQ community, asked board members if they had spoken to any transgender students about the policy.

"You may feel if you have a penis or vagina, you have to go into a certain bathroom. But that's not really what it's about," she said, adding that "I thank goodness every day" her transgender niece was not attending school in Pennridge.