While marriage equality proponents in Maine will be struggling to keep their new same-sex marriage law in the coming months, at least the state’s Human Rights Commission is able to prevent discrimination against the transgender community. Last week, the agency ruled in favor of a transgender girl’s right to use the girl’s bathroom at her school in Orono, a college town just outside of Bangor.
The problem started in October 2007, when the child was in the 5th grade, and arrangements were made for her to use the girl’s bathroom. Soon thereafter, a boy who had been harassing her and calling her “faggot” starting following her into the bathroom to harass her further. (The disturbing aspect of this is that the boy had his grandfather’s blessing to bother her.) After the second incident, the boy was suspended, and removed from the girl’s classroom; the girl was, then, instructed that she needed to use a single-stall restroom on the other end of the school.
Around the same time that the girl’s parents filed a complaint with the Maine Human Rights Commission, the boy’s grandfather, Paul Melanson, filed his own complaint, indicating that his grandson was also being discriminated against, that the boy had as much a right to use that girl’s bathroom as the transgender girl did, under the public accommodation provision of the Maine Human Rights Act. (For the record, the boy is heterosexual with no question about his gender identity.)
The agency ruled in favor of the girl’s right to use the restroom that was appropriate to her gender identity. They also ruled that Melanson’s grandson was not discriminated against, that he never should have been in the girls’ restroom to begin with. “Minor Student 2 was disciplined because his biological sex is male and his gender identity is male and he used the girls’ bathroom,” the investigator’s report said.
More about the case from The Bangor Daily News:
According to [Eric] Mehnert, [attorney for the girl's parents], his clients wanted to bring the case in part because the parents’ previously “wonderful” relationship with school officials over their child’s public accommodation had broken down.
“The message that was sent from the superintendent said that it is OK to segregate this child, it is OK to ostracize this child,” Mehnert said. “I think [the parents’] biggest challenge is their fear — it’s a very real fear — that the Orono school system has told them that they don’t think they can protect the child.”
Because the child started identifying as a girl at a very young age, the parents had worked with school officials to have a plan for “reasonable accommodation,” Mehnert said. But when the fifth-grade incidents happened, the school moved to resolve the situation with “no interactive conversation,” he said.
[Melissa] Hewey, [attorney for the Orono School Department] said school officials had the child’s interests in mind.
“Not only did they provide accommodation, a separate bathroom, that was the bathroom that the student’s health care practitioner recommended,” she said.
Mehnert said his clients had hoped to look at the fifth-grade incidents as an opportunity for education rather than a problem.
“They felt that the school could be a leader in what everyone sees as a very complex issue, and they were rebuffed,” he said.
This is actually the second time in two months that the Human Rights Commission has ruled in favor of a transgender individual right to public accommodation. When a transgender woman complained that a Denny’s restaurant in the town of Auburn refused to let her use the women’s restroom there until she had sex-reassignment surgery, the agency released a ruling on May 18 that the transgender woman had been discriminated against, and that she has the right to use the restroom appropriate for her gender identity.
