Dear Commons Community,
The Massapequa School District cannot enforce a resolution barring transgender students from using restrooms and locker rooms aligned with their gender identity, the state’s education commissioner ruled on Friday.
The ruling comes about a week after the New York Civil Liberties Union filed an appeal with New York State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa, challenging the district’s “anti-trans facilities policy.” As reported by The New York Daily News.
“This decision reaffirms what we already knew: the Massapequa school board’s transphobic resolution flagrantly violates New York laws, which prohibit discrimination based on gender identity,” Emma Hulse, education counsel at the NYCLU, said in an emailed statement to the Daily News Friday.
“All students have a right to safe, inclusive learning environments, and trans students are no different. We will keep fighting until all trans students in Massapequa have the right to use the bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity,” Hulse said.
A middle school educator on Long Island told The News that she is part of a “very small minority” who welcomed the news, saying she was at her “wits’ end” with the barrage of “negative and hateful comments” she saw in a local moms’ Facebook group.
The Massapequa resident, who asked to remain anonymous, said that while discriminatory policies like this can harm transgender students at her school, they don’t seem to affect other students. “As far as I know, kids aren’t talking about it,” she said. “Seems the parents are more concerned.”
The Massapequa School District, one of the largest K‑12 systems in Nassau County, is located on Long Island’s South Shore, about 25 miles east of New York City. It serves more than 6,500 students across six elementary schools, a middle school, and a high school. In September, the district approved a resolution requiring students to use restrooms and locker rooms that align with their sex assigned at birth, in accordance with President Trump’s anti-transgender executive order.
According to the NYCLU, it is illegal for New York schools to discriminate based on a person’s gender identity or expression.
Earlier this year, the New York Attorney General’s Office and the State Education Department released a joint statement reaffirming that schools must continue to comply with protections already in place for transgender and nonbinary students.
On Tuesday, the Massapequa Board of Education responded to the state Department of Education’s order, saying the district remains “committed to ensuring the safety and dignity of all students” and “will continue to offer a gender-neutral locker room and bathroom option to any student who will be more comfortable using such a space.”
Good move by Commissioner Rosa!
Tony
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