The administration of Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin is working to impose new restrictions on transgender students in the Virginia public school system.
Steve Helber / AP
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Steve Helber / AP
The administration of Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin is working to impose new restrictions on transgender students in the Virginia public school system.
Steve Helber / AP
Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin’s administration has proposed new policies to the state’s schools on how they treat transgender students, including restricting which bathrooms they can use and pronouns. where you can go.
Virginia Department of Education released its Policie 2022 templateFridays online, effectively returning to the work of Youngkin’s predecessor, Democrat Ralph Northam. The new rules will go into effect for more than 1 million children enrolled in the state’s public school system.
The revised rules explicitly state that students are only allowed to use the bathrooms and changing rooms that are related to the gender assigned to them at birth. If a student wishes to participate in a sport or other extracurricular activities, again, they must only participate in teams that match the gender assigned at birth.
Furthermore, a student’s legal name and gender cannot be changed “even with written instructions from the parent or eligible student” without formal legal documents or court orders. . Teachers and other school officials may refer to a student only by pronouns related to their gender at birth. But they also don’t need to mention the student’s preferred name regardless of the paperwork if they feel doing so “would violate their constitutionally protected rights.”
Virginia now joins a growing number of state legislatures across the United States that have imposed new restrictions on gay and transgender students. Like Virginia, these policies often Limit conversations about sex and gender identity in schools.
Already more than 200 Anti-LGBTQ bills introduced at the state level alone this year, according to LGBTQ rights group, Freedom for all Americans. Some go as far as restricting access to sex-affirming medical care.
The Virginia Department of Education says the basis for the new rules is to support the “right of parents” to determine their child’s exposure to LGBTQ issues.
The department said that by adopting these new standards, Virginia “reaffirms parents’ right to determine how their children will be raised and educated. Empowering parents is not just a fundamental right, but is essential to improving outcomes for all children in Virginia.”
The agency said the policies adopted under Northam’s leadership “advance a concrete perspective on achieving social and cultural transformation in schools.”
Democrats and advocacy groups were quick to condemn the proposals from the state’s Republican governor.
Virginia Representative Danica Roem, a Democrat representing Prince William County, call Youngkin for violating the state’s human rights law.
“[Youngkin’s] action should be contested in court under the Virginia Human Rights Act,” she tweeted this weekend.
The public can still comment on draft model policies later this month on Virginia City Hall Regulations website.
