Virginia Senate rejects bill repealing trans student protections
model policies provide a footprint for potential policies that acknowledge transgender students’ gender identity, ensuring they can have their gender affirmed, be addressed by their preferred name and pronouns, have their gender reflected on school records and transcripts, access facilities like bathrooms or locker rooms consistent with their gender identity, and are guaranteed equal access to school resources, clubs, or sports teams.The model policies are not a one-size-fits-all dictate, nor are they consistent from county to county.
Last March, the Department of Education only said that the policies adopted by individual school boards had to be “consistent with” the aim of the model policies — in other words, ensuring that transgender students are not mistreated or denied opportunities granted to other students.
Under the law, individual school boards are perfectly within their rights to adopt more inclusive or in-depth policies guaranteeing protections for trans students if they see fit.But some LGBTQ advocates had feared, following the November victories of Gov.
Glenn Youngkin, Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears, and Attorney General Jason Miyares, as well as a switch in party control of the House of Delegates, that Republicans would move to rescind protections for transgender students, leaving them vulnerable to discrimination and harassment at the hands of reactionary school boards, unfeeling school administrators, and conservative peers.But because Democrats still control the Virginia Senate, they also hold majorities on every committee, setting the stage for the inevitable defeat of the proposed measure to exempt local school boards from having to adopt pro-transgender policies.“This is an important victory for the health.
