I Begged Betsy Devos to Protect Trans Students Like Me, but She Failed Us
Left Screenshot of Grace Dolan-Sandrino via VICE, Right Photo courtesy of Flickr User Gage Skidmore

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I Begged Betsy Devos to Protect Trans Students Like Me, but She Failed Us

She looked at me with tears in her eyes and told me that she wouldn't wish my experience with discrimination on any other child.

Earlier this month, the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) was reportedly issued updated guidelines regarding discrimination against transgender students. The guidance, which was obtained by the Huffington Post, is vague. First, it states that the OCR doesn't need to adhere to the protective policy that the Obama administration issued in May of 2016 (after all, it was rescinded under Trump). Instead, the OCR is instructed to follow Title IX "as interpreted in decisions of federal courts."

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The ACLU has called this guidance "far from clear," clarifying that "federal court rulings are increasingly on the side of transgender students." However, the guidance seems to make its bias apparent:

Please evaluate each allegation separately, searching for a permissible jurisdictional basis for OCR to retain and pursue the complaint. It is permissible, for example, for one allegation in a complaint (such as harassment based on gender stereotypes) to go forward while another allegation (such as denial of access to restrooms based on gender identity) is dismissed.

This is a political issue, but it's also personal—and I have a unique connection to it. In 2016, I was invited to join several other students to work with the Department of Education under President Obama to craft a progressive, life-saving bathroom guidance which clarified that Title IX anti-discrimination protections also extend to gender identity. About a dozen of us kids worked with then-US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Catherine Lhamon to include the experiences of transgender and gender non-conforming students in that important, historical political document. In February of 2017, a month after Donald Trump took office, his administration rescinded it.

Read more: I'm a Trans Teen—Stop Talking About My Genitalia Under the Guise of 'Privacy'

After Trump's Department of Education dismantled our work, I was invited back to Capitol Hill. It was the same table I sat at two years ago—but this time, I sat across from our nation's new Secretary of Education, a businesswoman named Betsy DeVos. In my eyes, DeVos had just given permission to the country to discriminate against me.

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My mother and I, along with two other families, went with national LGBTQ advocacy organizations to educate DeVos on the gravity of her action; there are real costs to allowing discrimination against trans students. I wanted to humanize the people that Betsy DeVos seemed to casually disregard. I'm trans, but I'm also just a teenage girl, like any other teenage girl. I sat right in front of her because I wanted her to see how she had hurt me. I was excited and anxious and angry all at once. My stomach hurt.

I felt the tension build up in my body as we walked in the front doors of the US Department of Education building in Washington DC. I checked in and met up with my mom and the rest of the small group, including five-year-old Ellie, an adorable little girl in pink tights, a blue flowered dress, with black silky curls.

Is the grandchild of Betsy DeVos more deserving of human rights than Ellie, or me?

I'm clearly political, but Ellie just sat at the table drawing pictures; she's young, and didn't know much of what was going on. It was important for secretary DeVos to see the trans kids that she and the Trump administration hurt. By rescinding Obama's guidance, they have given the country permission to continue hurting us, too. I watched as DeVos told Ellie that she has a granddaughter her age, and I wondered—would DeVos give the country permission to discriminate against her granddaughter? Because however familial her comment appeared, she had effectively taken action that would make that little girl's life more difficult, and less safe. Is the grandchild of Betsy DeVos more deserving of human rights than Ellie, or me?

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We all told DeVos the ways in which discrimination without clear federal guidance negatively impacted our lives, our schools, our families, and our communities. It doesn't only hurt the targeted group when their human rights are denied. All of us are hurt. All of us are made a little less human when we participate in the erasing of human rights. Ellie and I came with our parents, but one mother had climbed Capitol Hill alone. She was there without her child because he had taken his own life two years ago.

In hostile school or home environments, trans youth suffer from depression, anxiety, and suicide at far greater rates than their cis-gender peers. However, when they are in supportive environments, they have the same risk as the general population. We can drastically lower the likelihood of trans suicide by simply acknowledging their basic human rights.

We took turns around the table to speak to DeVos. When it was my turn, I laid out how different my experiences were like in middle and high school. When I was in middle school, I was forced to use a separate bathroom from everyone else. There was not yet federal guidance in place that could teach administrators the ways to respect my human rights. So they didn't. When I was in high school, the Obama administration had placed strong protections to ensure that I would have an equal right to an education, and my school conformed to them. You can't imagine the relief that I experienced, just by being able to live my life as the girl I am, without being separated from my classmates as if I were less deserving of basic rights than they were. I wanted Secretary DeVos to understand how alienating it was to be bullied, and the isolation that came from being forced to use a bathroom separate from everyone else—but I also wanted her to understand that when there are no federal protections for marginalized groups, states that want to discriminate will discriminate.

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At the end of our meeting, I told DeVos that in order for the discussion to prove worthwhile, I needed to leave her with a charge to protect the human rights of transgender and gender non-conforming kids. Whether she wanted it or not, I gave DeVos a charge to stand up to classroom bullies like Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump. One after another, all of the trans children in our meeting told DeVos that no one has the right to relegate our human rights to states and localities.

To address DeVos directly: I've been watching you in the three months since that visit. I wanted to see if you would follow through on protecting transgender students against discrimination. And guess what? You have failed. Instead of ensuring our protection, all I have seen from you is a consistent refusal to publicly say that you won't allow discrimination.

In May, a House Appropriation subcommittee met with DeVos regarding the Trump administration's unprecedented request to funnel millions of federal dollars into voucher programs for private and private-public charter schools. The problem is that some of these schools may have policies discriminating against LGBTQ students and students with disabilities. DeVos was asked by Democratic Massachusetts Rep. Katherine Clark about voucher program-related discrimination in Indiana: "Would you say to Indiana, that school cannot discriminate against LGBTQ students if you want to receive federal dollars?" DeVos replied, "States and local communities are best equipped to make these decisions."

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In June, the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee grilled DeVos on the same subject. Democratic Senators Patty Murray of Washington and Jeff Merkeley of Oregon tried again in vain to get DeVos to say, on the record, that she would not allow schools using federal money to discriminate against LGBTQ or other students. According to NPR, DeVos gave the same answer 14 times: "Schools that receive federal funds must follow federal law." Whatever that is.

I charged you to stand against discrimination.

Most recently, reports state that DeVos is meeting with groups that are considered anti-LGBT by the Southern Poverty Law Center: Focus on the Family and The Family Research Council. The DeVos family has a long history of supporting these organizations. Now, they've taken my seat at the table. And instead of listening to trans youth or caring about kids like Ellie, the bigoted assumptions of well-funded organizations may help this administration decide the fate of LBTQ students nation-wide.

Ms. DeVos, I came to see you face to face, and I begged you to take the human rights of all students seriously. That includes transgender students like me and Ellie. I charged you to stand against the discrimination that causes us great levels of depression, anxiety, and suicide, and yet you have failed to stand up for civil and human rights.

On June 17th, The Washington Post reported that you directed your Office of Civil Rights to close investigations of bullying, harassment, and discrimination against transgender students in Ohio and Illinois. Now you are not only refusing to say explicitly that federal dollars cannot be used to fund schools that discriminate against students based on their gender identity and/or sexual orientation—you are taking an active role in violating trans students' human rights.

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At the end of our meeting earlier this year, you looked at me with tears in your eyes and told me that you wouldn't wish my experience with discrimination on any other child. Yet now you have ensured that future to kids across the country.

But we will resist you; we will fight bad policy with good policy. We will protest you. We will advocate for justice and equality. And—perhaps in the long-run—we will win. Because truth and justice are on our side.