The Supreme Court on Tuesday passed up a chance to intervene in the debate over bathrooms for transgender students, rejecting an appeal from an Indiana public school district.

Federal appeals courts are divided over whether school policies enforcing restrictions on which bathrooms transgender students can use violate federal law or the Constitution.

In the case the court rejected without comment, the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an order granting transgender boys access to the boys’ bathroom. The appeal came from the Metropolitan School District of Martinsville, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) southwest of Indianapolis.

    • Wahots@pawb.social
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      11 months ago

      My highschool did gender neutral restrooms well over a decade ago, and had been doing it for years. (Mostly, it was an old building, and there weren’t enough restrooms to make them all gendered and separate). Everyone had their own enclosed bathroom, with real walls and real doors. It worked fine. Better than fine, as the students were tasked with cleaning the entire school, so nobody tried to destroy the restrooms as some other group of students would have to clean it up. New students got used to it in about 15 minutes, and it wasn’t a topic of discussion throughout HS. This was well before the culture wars though.

      • blackn1ght
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        11 months ago

        as the students were tasked with cleaning the entire school

        What, as in they did the job of the cleaners?

        • RGB3x3@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          I personally have no issue with making students clean their schools. It teaches them responsibility, proper cleaning habits, and respect for public spaces. A kid should know how to scrub a toilet, sweep, take out trash, and not soil a public space.

          Honestly think that should be standard. Can always hire cleaners to use more powerful equipment and to clean up after sick kids and whatnot.

          • Doorbook@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            Well depends on the type of cleaning and the chemical use.

            Picking up trash might be okay, but cleaning washrooms?? That’s not only expose them to harmful chemicals but also require training and proper ware which is a job that you need to get paid for.

          • blackn1ght
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            11 months ago

            Making sure the classroom is tidy and in a respectable state at the end of the day, absolutely. But it’s not the schools responsibility to teach them those things, it’s on the parents.

        • Wahots@pawb.social
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          11 months ago

          Essentially, yes. They still had cleaners, but the students were primarily responsible for cleaning. They’d form groups with students from grades 6-12, and a teacher as the leader, and each team would be responsible for things like a classroom, a public area, the school grounds, etc. So nobody wanted to mess up the school because everyone was responsible for keeping it in order. It was usually a half hour 2-3 times a week, and the school was kept remarkably clean and damage-free.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      If you’ve ever been at a sports stadium when the women’s line is incredibly long and the men’s line is short, you’ll find plenty of women who miraculously discover a love of gender neutrality.

      The fear that most people have - and I’ve seen this as common among women as men, particularly when you invoke Gay Panic - is of sexual assault. And in a country, like the US, which seems to be either unwilling or unable to discourage sexual assault via public policy, there’s a real anxiety for lots of people whenever they use any kind of public restroom.

      There was a very similar outcry back during the 60s, when Jim Crow was struck down and bathrooms were racially integrated. You had certain people show extreme distress at the prospect of sharing a lavatory with some of a different race. And, as a consequence, we got a lot of suburban white flight and de facto segregation through modern day red-lining and private security harassment. There was a whole thing during the 80s, where black people trying to use restrooms in private malls (particularly in the South) would be harassed, expelled, and even arrested under nakedly untrue claims of shoplifting. Bunch of News Hour TV shows made a big stink about it for a long time.

      But the idea that “women just don’t want to” is heavily overstated. A lot of this anxiety is manufactured. A lot more has far less to do with gender generally speaking and more to do with the individual’s personal experiences.

    • CultHero@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      When you ban trans women from women’s bathrooms you’re opening them to trans men and all a cis man has to do is say “no worries, I’m a trans man, don’t mind the beard.”

      You make it EASIER for men to infiltrate women’s bathrooms.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        You make it EASIER for men to infiltrate women’s bathrooms.

        It is comically easy to enter a woman’s restroom. There is often not even a door in the way. If a man wants to walk in, the only thing keeping him out is peer pressure from the women inside.

        What I’ve seen from the trans-panic isn’t women somehow better policing their restrooms from men. What I’ve seen is women trying to clock other women, and harassing - even to the point of physical assault - anyone who doesn’t “look womanly” enough for their tastes.

        Case in point, a video of a woman being dragged out of a restroom by police because she was dressed too boyishly.

        Here’s another case of a woman who was “clocked” and harassed while using the restroom in a Danbury, NC Walmart. Her pixie cut and baseball cap was enough to provoke another patron into going apeshit.