President Trump has set his sights on Obama’s transgender bathroom protection rights. The controversy of which bathroom a transgender person should use got national attention when North Carolina passed a bill, known as HB2 that requires people to use the bathroom of the sex that they were born with. The immediate response was outrage and continued as a civil rights issue.  Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 that protects citizens from being discriminated against on the basis of gender.

When this bill was passed, question arose on how it was going to be enforced. How do you identify a transgender person without asking or violating them? Also, if the transgender person has undergone reconstructive surgery, should they be forced to use opposite bathroom that correlates to their previous body parts? These are questions that were not answered by North Carolina legislate. Another point that must be considered is what bathroom were transgender people using before this was brought to national attention? A transgender person has used whatever bathroom they felt comfortable using and they will likely continue doing so. 

Anyone who was in support of this bill was immediately accused of trans-phobia but they claim to have other motives. One reason many parents gave were that they wanted to protect their children from pedophiles that could fake being transgender and sneak into the bathroom. There are some issues with their thinking. Firstly, this profiles transgender people as pedophiles which is an unfair assumption. Being transgender does not make them less or more likely to be a pedophile and when pedophiles are released from prison they do not have to use a separate bathroom as child. A second concern was that non-transgender people would take advantage of a bill that would protect transgender people to use what bathroom they want. Meaning that a man could dress up as a woman and go into the women’s bathroom. The difference is non-transgender person is intentionally trying to cause a disturbance compared to the transgender person who is just trying to use the restroom. One resolution that has been suggested is transgender people use family bathrooms or building bathrooms especially for transgender people. Issues begin with the fact that this would be expensive and legislators would not be motivated enough to allocate the money. Another is that not all facilities offer family bathrooms.   

The current Trump administration has no interest in protecting transgender rights to the bathroom. On February 22, 2017, President Trump revoked the protections that former President Barack Obama enacted that allowed students to safely use the bathroom that matched their gender identity. Again, students should be protected by Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. Gavin Grimm, a transgender male student is pending his day in the Supreme Court against the Gloucester County School Board. The decision of the court could finally settle the issue and decide whether or not Title IX protects transgender students. The case will be heard in March.

Whenever a minority or an oppressed group of people take a step forward to be truly equal there is always something that tries to knock them back. Any type of bathroom restriction would take more effort to enforce that is necessary. Transgender people are not out to hurt your children or take over your bathroom, they are just there for the stall.