ACLU calls for probes into two Texas school districts’ anti-trans policies

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The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas is looking for civil rights investigations into two North Texas school districts over not too long ago carried out anti-transgender policies.

The ACLU, which filed the complaints Monday afternoon, needs the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to research the Frisco Independent School District for passing a coverage on Nov. 14 requiring college students to make use of bogs that align with their gender assigned at start. The district stated it will make lodging for college students who ask to make use of a personal restroom.

The ACLU stated Frisco’s coverage would permit the district to “challenge or second-guess students’ official birth certificates.”

“It is deeply invasive and unlawful for school administrators to interrogate students’ private medical information in this way,” the ACLU stated in a letter to the Department of Education. “School districts have no right to question students’ sexual characteristics such as genitalia, hormones, internal anatomy, or chromosomes.”

The ACLU additionally needs an investigation into the Keller Independent School District, which earlier this month handed a ban on all books that depict or reference transgender and nonbinary individuals.

“The policy attempts to erase the existence of transgender and non-binary individuals,” the ACLU’s letter stated.

Keller ISD’s anti-transgender coverage got here about six months after three conservative school board members had been elected onto the seven-member board. The new members, all of whom obtained massive donations from a Christian political motion committee, campaigned on points like banning books about LGBTQ experiences from school libraries and banning critical race theory, a college-level area of research that explores the concept racism is embedded in establishments and authorized methods.

Public training advocates and Texas lecturers have largely stated the self-discipline is just not a part of the curriculum in Texas public faculties but it surely has change into a shorthand for conservative teams to criticize how historical past and present occasions are taught with regard to race.

The ACLU claims that Frisco and Keller’s policies violate Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school that receives federal funding.

Frisco and Keller are the most recent North Texas school districts to have civil rights complaints lodged in opposition to them. Earlier this yr, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund filed a similar civil rights grievance in opposition to the Carroll Independent School District, based mostly in Southlake, for failing to guard college students from discrimination based mostly on their race, intercourse or gender id.

Southlake, situated between Dallas and Fort Worth, got here into the highlight three years in the past after a viral video of white excessive school college students chanting a racist slur prompted neighborhood members to share tales of harassment, NBC News reported.

Neither Keller ISD nor Frisco ISD instantly responded to a request for remark.