Liam Posovich, 19, and MJ Abrams, 17, are both trans and queer-identified teens from Portland, Oregon. The young men say they have used the boys’ restrooms at their respective high schools without incident — no other student has ever objected at either. But on Wednesday, both teens sat in a courtroom and listened as attorneys argued over whether letting them use school bathrooms that match their gender (instead of their assigned sex) constitutes a violation of privacy for their cisgender classmates.
“There’s no substance to what they were saying,” says Abrams, currently a senior at Portland’s Riverdale High School. “They were talking about sexual harassment, with no actual instances of sexual harassment related to trans youth at the school.”
The lawsuit in question was brought by a group of Oregonians calling themselves Parents for Privacy, in objection to a small-town school in Dallas County, Oregon that allowed a trans boy to use the boys’ restroom and locker room. But because the lawsuit also names the state and the U.S. Department of Education, it could impact trans students like Abrams and Posovich, too.
Abrams, who will attend the University of San Francisco in the fall, says that his school’s policy is that “all students are protected and you can use whatever bathroom you want.” But recently, Abrams and other students asked Riverdale to add new single-use bathrooms as well — because “there’s a lot of trans people who are somewhere on the spectrum, or nonbinary and gender-fluid, and they don’t feel comfortable using one bathroom or the other.”
The Dallas County school district argues that it was simply following an Oregon state law that extensively protects transgender students from discrimination. The ACLU and local LGBTQ+ advocacy group Basic Rights Oregon argue that trans students everywhere are protected by Title IX and the Constitution. Parents for Privacy argues that allowing trans boys to use boys’ bathrooms constitutes sexual harassment — against the other boys.
But as Oregon federal judge Marco A. Hernandez repeatedly pointed out Wednesday, there haven’t been any complaints from students in the Dallas School District regarding trans classmates. Parents for Privacy’s lawsuit, it would seem, is a solution in search of a problem at best — and a concealed effort to enforce discrimination and segregation against trans students at worst. Read more via them.