Sean Spicer: Trump administration is in full agreement that it should revoke transgender protections (Source vox.com)
White House press secretary Sean Spicer said there’s no argument: The Trump administration is ready to revoke a guidance that protects transgender students from discrimination in public schools.
Spicer was disputing a New York Times report that there’s been debate within the administration about whether the guidance should be revoked. His explanation: The president has maintained for a long time that this is a states’ rights issue and not one for the federal government. So while we have further guidance coming out on this, I think that all you have to do is look at what the president’s view has been for a long time, that this is not something that the federal government should be involved in, that this is a states’ rights issue.  A few months before President Donald Trump was elected, the Obama administration sent out a legally non binding obama-administration-transgender-bathrooms” guidance to federally funded schools arguing that trans students are protected by existing federal civil rights law. So, that administration said, schools should respect trans students’ rights, including their right to use the bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity.
The Obama administration cited Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in public schools. It argued that anti-trans discrimination is a form of sex discrimination, because discrimination against trans people is rooted in stereotypes and prejudices of what people should be like based on the sex they were assigned at birth.
Conservatives, including those in the Trump administration, see the trans-inclusive view as a misinterpretation of federal laws. They argue that the authors of civil rights laws, which go back to the 1960s and ’70s, never intended to include trans people in sex discrimination bans, so trans people shouldn’t be protected under the statutes.