Dear Secretary Devos, We Are the Parents of Transgender Children
Dear Secretary DeVos, We are the parents of transgender children from across the United States, representing various ethnicities, socioeconomic backgrounds, and faith communities. We write to express our outrage and deep concern over the repeated injustices committed by the Trump-Pence Administration’s Department of Education against transgender students. One year ago, during your confirmation hearing as U.S. Secretary of Education, you promised to protect the civil rights of all students. Instead, almost immediately after taking office, the U.S. Department of Education under your command rescinded protective guidance for our transgender children and is now, according to reports, turning away transgender students and their families reporting discrimination. All any parent wants is for their children to be safe, healthy, and fulfilled. Sadly, today in America, we see our children ostracized and discriminated against in too many of their schools. This toxic reality compromises their ability to learn and succeed both academically and socially, yet the Office for Civil Rights claims this issue is not within its jurisdiction or, by extension, responsibility. As parents of transgender youth, we are, unfortunately, all too familiar with the heartbreaking challenges often faced by children like our own around the country. National surveys reveal staggering statistics related to the harmful experiences of transgender youth in schools, in large part due to lack of access to facilities such as restrooms and locker rooms that align with young people’s gender identity. A recent study conducted by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation of over 12,000 LGBTQ youth indicates that, of participants who identified as transgender, non-binary, or otherwise non-cisgender, almost 50% never use the restroom in school--with 90% of that subset attributing that fact to being personally restricted from using facilities that align with their gender identity.
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