Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Tells Its Schools To Honor Students' Chosen Gender Identity

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) announced a new regulation last week advising principals this fall to honor students' choices about their gender identity in restrooms, locker rooms, yearbooks, and graduation ceremonies, school officials told the Charlotte Observer. CMS said that the new guidance follows the Fourth Circuit's holding in G.G. v. Gloucester County Sch. Bd. (see our coverage here) and is not intended to defy North Carolina's law HB2, which, among other things, requires students to use public school restrooms and locker rooms based on the gender on their birth certificates. In G.G., the Fourth Circuit held that the U.S. Dept. of Education's interpretation that Title IX applies to transgender students was entitled to deference in light of the ambiguity of the meaning of "sex" in the statute. The new CMS regulation will require schools to identify and address students according to their preferred identity and will eliminate "gender-based activities that have no educational purpose, such as having a girls’ and boys’ line to go to recess."The Charlotte-Observer's story is here.

And speaking of G.G. v. Gloucester County Sch. Bd., on remand from the Fourth Circuit, last week the district court granted the  preliminary injunction to allow the plaintiff to use the boys' restroom at Gloucester High School. The district court did not extend that access to any other school facilities, such as locker rooms, because the plaintiff's suit only sought bathroom access. The June 23 order of the Eastern District of Virginia is here.