Two Long Island school districts violated New York State law in barring transgender students from bathrooms and locker rooms that aligned with their gender identity, the state\u2019s Education Department ruled this week.<\/p>\n
Board members at both school systems, the Massapequa School District and the Locust Valley Central School District, had approved restrictions weeks apart that required students to use facilities that were gender neutral or corresponded with their sex assigned at birth.<\/p>\n
On Monday, the state\u2019s education commissioner, Betty A. Rosa, struck down the policies, calling them discriminatory and illegal, the latest political fight in the United States over transgender rights and gender identity.<\/p>\n
The case was brought by the parents of a transgender student in Massapequa, who said the school system\u2019s policy had caused her to feel anxious, depressed and suicidal.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese were the predictable results of Massapequa\u2019s actions, which targeted a discrete group of people who have become increasingly vilified by irresponsible adults,\u201d Ms. Rosa wrote.<\/p>\n
Emma Hulse, an education counsel at the New York Civil Liberties Union, which filed the case, said in a statement, \u201cThese transphobic resolutions flagrantly violate New York laws, which unequivocally prohibit discrimination based on gender identity.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Locust Valley and Massapequa school systems did not respond to requests for comment. Ms. Rosa ordered them to allow students to use any school facility that \u201cmost closely aligned with their gender identity.\u201d<\/p>\n
The issue of transgender rights has become a major cultural flashpoint in recent years, led by social conservatives and Republicans who have pursued restrictions on transgender Americans at the local<\/a>, state<\/a> and federal<\/a> levels. Those efforts have ratcheted up during President Trump\u2019s second term.<\/p>\n The federal government has threatened to hold back or has pulled funding from school districts across the country over their bathroom and sports participation policies. Last fall, the Department of Education cut more than $35 million in grants from New York City schools<\/a>. A federal judge recently ruled that the funding had been improperly withheld.<\/p>\n The decision this week by New York\u2019s education commissioner was the latest clash between her department and the Massapequa School District, which, along with Locust Valley, is in a reliably Republican area of Nassau County on Long Island. Locust Valley was added to the case because its board of education had approved a resolution \u201cmaterially identical\u201d to that of Massapequa\u2019s.<\/p>\n There are about 6,500 students in Massapequa and 1,800 in Locust Valley.<\/p>\n The Massapequa School District sued Ms. Rosa<\/a> in October in the Eastern District of New York after the commissioner issued a temporary order barring it from enforcing the restrictions.<\/p>\n