This is a week old so apologies if there have already been threads on this that I haven't noticed.
I have some connections with the area so I tend to keep in touch with what's happening there. There has been a long running case in the state of Oregon concerning transgender toilets and changing rooms in schools. The parents have fought it all the way to the Supreme Court but they have now been told that the Supreme Court refuse to hear the appeal so they have lost:-
Supreme Court rejects appeal over Oregon school district’s restroom policy for transgender students
So, as it stands now, it's full steam ahead for gender free changing rooms in Oregon and elsewhere in the States.
This prompted me to have a read of the Court of Appeal judgment in the case and I was really shocked by some of the things that had happened.
Also, quite shocked that the language used in the judgment was all "assigned at birth" and "cisgender" etc - very different from the judgment in the High Court here in the UK with the Keira Bell case.
The full judgment is here as a pdf:-
Parents for Privacy v Dallas School District No 2
Some background and highlights from the judgment:-
In September 2015, a student at Dallas High School who had been born and who remained biologically female publicly identified as a boy, and he asked school officials to allow him to use the boys’ bathroom and locker room.
[...]
Student A began using the boys’ locker room and changing clothes “while male students were present.” This caused several cisgender boys “embarrassment, humiliation, anxiety, intimidation, fear, apprehension, and stress,” because they had to change clothes for their PE class and attend to their needs while someone who had been assigned the opposite sex at birth was present. Although privacy stalls were available in the bathrooms, these were insufficient to alleviate the cisgender boys’ fear of exposing themselves to Student A, because the stalls had gaps through which “partially unclothed bodies” could “inadvertently” be seen.
[...]
As a consequence of their fear of exposure to Student A, some cisgender boys began using the restroom as little as possible while at school, and others risked tardiness by using distant restrooms during passing periods in order to try to find a restroom in which Student A was unlikely to be present.
When parents and other students in the Dallas community became aware of the Student Safety Plan, many opposed it publicly at successive school board meetings, in an effort to dissuade the District from implementing the policy. Some parents in the District are concerned and anxious about the prospect of their children using locker rooms or bathrooms together with a student who was assigned the opposite biological sex at birth. The Student Safety Plan also interferes with some parents’ preferred moral and/or religious teaching of their children concerning modesty and nudity. In addition, several cisgender girls suffered from stress and anxiety as a result of their fear that a transgender girl student who remains biologically male would be allowed to use the girls’ locker room and bathroom. Girls had the option of changing in the nurse’s office, but it was on the other side of the school.
So, the above are some of the highlights of the background to the case.
The parents went on to make two claims, one under the 14th Amendment (right to privacy) and one under Title IX (sex based discrimination).
The parents contended that the 14th Amendment extended to privacy for your actual body as well, but the court held, due to various existing US precedents, that this wasn't the case and that:-
...the potential threat that a high school student might see or be seen by someone of the opposite biological sex while either are undressing or performing bodily functions in a restroom, shower, or locker room does not give rise to a constitutional violation
[...]
This conclusion is supported by the fact that the Student Safety Plan provides alternative options and privacy protections to those who do not want to share facilities with a transgender student, even though those alternative options admittedly appear inferior and less convenient.
(so those opposed to this get shoved off out of the way)
They also failed under the Title IX claim which the court characterised as:-
Plaintiffs contend that the district court erred in failing to recognize that the District’s policy violates Title IX by turning locker rooms, showers, and multi-user restrooms into sexually harassing environments and by forcing students to forgo use of such facilities as the solution to harassment.
The court didn't accept this and said that because transgender pupils were allowed in both male and female changing rooms then there was no discrimination based on sex, in other words since boys and girls are treated equally badly then it doesn't count (It would have been different if the Plan had applied to transgender boys only or transgender girls only)
So, that is the state of play in the USA at the moment. It really is quite frightening.
It's also interesting to hear that it's also boys who are complaining about transboys having access to male spaces as, certainly in this country, it seems to always be about transwomen wanting access to female spaces.