June 10, 2015

Over the past several years, states across the country have adopted laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools. Along with these state laws, in 2014 the U.S. Department of Education issued a guidance clarifying that transgender students are protected from discrimination under Title IX. 

Despite these laws and guidance, Media Matters for America found that various conservative media outlets have promoted myths that policies protecting transgender students "create confusion, violate students' privacy rights, and can be exploited by students who will pretend to be transgender in order to sneak into the restrooms for the opposite sex."

Media Matters decided to test these harmful myths, and contacted officials at the largest school districts in 12 states with gender identity protections on the books. They asked them if they had experienced "any incidences of harassment or inappropriate behavior" as a result of "allowing transgender students to access facilities they're comfortable with." 

After interviewing 17 school districts covering 600,000 students, they found that not one school reported any incidents of harassment or inappropriate behavior after implementing transgender nondiscrimination policies. In fact, many of the school districts praised their policies as success stories, as seen by this quote from Boston Public Schools:

"While there is state law and a district non-discrimination policy that protects all of our students from and against discrimination and harassment, we are most proud of our work with schools and external partners over the past two years to deepen our capacity to proactively meet the needs of our GLBT students."

From this report, we can see that the myths about transgender protections for students just are not true in places that have these protections. In reality, the protections benefit the school districts by making them more inclusive spaces for all students.