\n<\/p>\n
Two Long Island school districts violated New York state law by barring transgender students from entering bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity, the state Education Department ruled this week.<\/p>\n
Board members in both school systems, Massapequa School District and Locust Valley Central School District, approved restrictions weeks apart that required students to use facilities that were gender neutral or corresponded to their sex assigned at birth.<\/p>\n
On Monday, the state’s education commissioner, Betty A. Rosas slammed the policies as discriminatory and illegal, marking the latest political battle over transgender rights and gender identity in the United States.<\/p>\n
The case was brought by the parents of a transgender student in Massapequa who said she was feeling anxious, depressed and suicidal because of the school system’s policy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cThese were the predictable consequences of Massapequa\u2019s actions, which targeted a distinct group of people who have become increasingly stigmatized by irresponsible adults,\u201d Ms. Rosa wrote.<\/p>\n
“These transphobic proposals flagrantly violate New York laws, which clearly prohibit discrimination based on gender identity,” Emma Hulse, education attorney for the New York Civil Liberties Union, which filed the case, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The Locust Valley and Massapequa school systems did not respond to requests for comment. Ms. Rosa ordered them to allow students to use any school facility that is “most closely associated with their gender identity.”<\/p>\n
The issue of transgender rights has become a major cultural conflict point in recent years, led by social conservatives and Republicans who have imposed restrictions on transgender Americans at the local, state, and federal levels. Those efforts have accelerated during President Trump’s second term.<\/p>\n
The federal government has threatened to withhold or withdraw funding over bathroom and sports participation policies of school districts across the country. Last fall, the Education Department cut funding to New York City schools by more than $35 million. A federal judge recently ruled that the funding was improperly withheld.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
New York’s education commissioner’s decision this week was the latest confrontation between his department and the Massapequa School District, which, along with Locust Valley, is in a reliably Republican area of \u200b\u200bNassau County on Long Island. Locust Valley was added to the case because its board of education had approved a “materially similar” proposal to Massapequa’s.<\/p>\n
Massapequa has approximately 6,500 students and Locust Valley has 1,800 students.<\/p>\n
The Massapequa School District sued Ms. Rosa in the Eastern District of New York in October, after the commissioner issued a temporary order to stop it from implementing the restrictions.<\/p>\n
Massapequa had argued in that case, which has not been resolved, that its policy is consistent with several of Mr. Trump\u2019s executive orders that target the legal rights of transgender people and with Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in educational programs that receive federal funding. It said Ms. Rosa’s order in October “granted biological males the right to enter intimate spaces with biological females indefinitely.”<\/p>\n
The two sides also faced off early last year, when the school district sued the state Department of Education over a policy prohibiting the use of Native American team names and mascots. The school district in Massapequa, whose name is derived from a Native American word translating to “great waterland”, uses a side profile of a Native American man in a feathered headdress as its mascot. Massapequa High School’s team name is the “Chiefs”.<\/p>\n
The feud caught the attention of Mr. Trump and his administration, whose Education Secretary Linda McMahon visited Massapequa last year to support the district’s effort to keep the mascot.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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