Add Your Name To Stand Up for Transgender Youth
The Human Rights Campaign is fighting back. Sign our letter standing in solidarity with parents of transgender youth: send a message to President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions calling on them to reverse course and protect transgender students.
SUBJECT: Taking a Stand for Transgender Youth
TO: President Donald J. Trump & Attorney General Jeff Sessions
As a supporter of the LGBTQ community and the Human Rights Campaign, I am standing in solidarity with transgender youth and their families in light of your administration's decision to rescind its challenge to a nationwide stay on vital protections for transgender students. We are calling on you to immediately reverse course and direct the Department of Justice to uphold guidance protecting transgender students.
All students deserve equal access to a safe, welcoming school and a high quality education no matter who they are and where they live. This is the value at the center of our nation's education policies and civil rights laws and it is a principle upheld by the 2016 guidance issued by the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education seeking the fair and respectful treatment of transgender students in our nation's schools and colleges.
In communities across this country, thanks in part to this guidance, we have seen transgender students of all ages seamlessly welcomed into their schools by friends and faculty. We have witnessed, first hand, the success of inclusive policies that reflect the overwhelming consensus from health professionals like the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association that affirming our children's gender identities is imperative. And, as more transgender young people come out, the guidance adopted by the Obama Administration continues to offer teachers and administrators a helpful tool in building learning environments that allow all students to flourish.
Sadly, too many still choose to target transgender children for mistreatment and violence. Many of us find ourselves in school districts or states that are considering or have already adopted policies that single-out transgender students for discrimination. According to HRC's research, 75 percent of transgender young people report feeling unsafe in school. One study found that more than 50 percent of transgender youth have attempted to commit suicide at least once in their lifetime. These policies are wrong, they hurt our nation's children, and they violate the principle of equal protection.
All I want for our nation's children is to be healthy, safe and loved. No young person should wake up in the morning fearful of the school day ahead. When this guidance was issued last year, it provided our families across the country with the knowledge and security that our government was determined to protect our children from bullying and discrimination. Please do not take that away. I ask you to preserve the guidance and instruct the Departments of Justice and Education to robustly pursue every opportunity to enforce Title IX on behalf of transgender students.
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