ISSUES
: Sexuality and Gender
Chapter 3: LGBTQ+ issues
33
Transgender girl, six, wins right to use
girls’ toilets
By Kelly Rose Bradford
A
six-year-old transgender child has won a civil
rights case which will allow her to use the girls’
toilets at her Colorado school. Coy Mathis’s
family had taken her and her four siblings out of the
Eagleside Elementary school in Fountain while the case
was ongoing.
The Colorado Civil Rights Division ruled on Sunday that
the Fountain-Fort Carson School District had caused an
unnecessarily hostile situation for Coy by not allowing her
to use the girls’ lavatories. Steven Chavez, the division
director, said that the school had created “an environment
rife with harassment”.
Coy, who was born male but has identified as female since
the age of four, had suddenly been banned from entering
the girls’ facilities at the school, despite having been
recognised as a girl throughout her time at the school.
Her parents, Kathryn and Jeremy Mathis, filed a complaint
through the Transgender Legal Defense and Education
Fund in February after they received a call from the school
telling them that when Coy returned from the winter break,
she would have to use the boys’ toilets.
“She would use the girls’ restrooms, she would be called
a girl, she would go in the girls’ lines,” Kathryn Mathis told
chat show host Katie Couric at the time.
“It came out that Coy was no longer going to be able to use
the girls’ restroom and they were going to require her to be
using the boys’ room, the staff bathroom or the bathroom
for the sick children. We didn’t know why, we had no idea
where this was coming from.
“We got a call one evening, it was the principal and he said
he wanted to set up a meeting with us to discuss options
for Coy’s future use of the restroom,” added her husband,
Jeremy.
The school’s lawyer, W. Kelly Dude, told reporters back
in February that the decision had been made in order to
protect all the school’s students and “took into account not
only Coy but other students in the building, their parents,
and the future impact a boy with male genitals using a
girls’ bathroom would have as Coy grew older”.
The Mail
reports that the family’s action was the first to
challenge transgender people’s access to bathrooms
under Colorado’s anti-discrimination laws.
Coy’s delighted mum said that the family were pleased
and relieved that she will now be treated the same as other
girls in her school.
“Schools should not discriminate against their students,
and we are thrilled that Coy can return to school and put
this behind her,” Kathryn said. “All we ever wanted was for
Coy’s school to treat her the same as other little girls. We
are extremely happy that she now will be treated equally.”
14 August 2014
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The above information has been reprinted with kind
permission from The Huffington Post UK. Please visit
for further information.
© 2016 AOL (UK) Limited
When you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go. But while a trip to the bathroom is a
rather straight-forward experience for most people, it can be a difficult and
even dangerous experience for members of the trans community.
According to a report published by the Transgender Law Center in the US,
transgender people have been refused access to the appropriate facilities
at their place of work or school, while others have been attacked in public
bathrooms.
The number of gender-neutral bathrooms has grown in recent years, but this
has not been without controversy. In North Carolina, USA, a new law dictates
where transgender people can use the bathroom: the law requires that people
use bathrooms according to their biological sex (the sex they were born with),
rather than the gender they identify with. In defence of this new law, it is
argued that this is really about equality and safety for everyone; however,
others feel that this is a direct violation of human rights.
Source: ‘Everyone’s talking about this gender-neutral bathroom sign – here’s why’ by Brogan Driscoll, The
Huffington Post UK, 13 May 2015.
