Bernstein Fellow Ryan Thoreson ’14 writes report on Transgender Students at Risk

Ryan Thoreson ’14 is the Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights Fellow at Human Rights Watch where he focuses on LGBT children’s rights. Ryan has recently written and researched a report at Human Rights Watch entitled “Shut Out: Restrictions on Bathroom and Locker Room Access for Transgender Youth in US Schools.” The report includes powerful testimonies from 74 current or former transgender students in Alabama, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, and Utah. The report outlines how “restricting transgender students’ access to shared spaces is not only unnecessary, but discriminatory and dangerous.”

As the new school year commences, the report is a timely statement to schools that barring student access to shared facilities is highly detrimental to their wellbeing and education. The report documents how discrimination puts transgender students at increased risk of harassment, assault, bullying, and restricts their ability to participate fully in school life. Efforts to restrict transgender people’s access to facilities that correspond with their gender have centered on issues of child protection. This report turns this argument of child protection towards transgender students, illustrating that “when schools require transgender girls to use the men’s room or force transgender boys to use the women’s room, they put them at risk of physical, verbal or sexual assault from other students or adults.”

Bathroom access for transgender students has been a topic of fierce political debate over the past year in the United States with lawmakers across the country debating restrictions on bathroom access for transgender students. On March 23, 2016, North Carolina passed a law restricting access to facilities and repealing ordinances that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. In the report, Thoreson describes North Carolina’s law as “an act of affirmative and deliberate discrimination in violation of international human rights law.” The report outlines clearly the obligations of the United States to protect and uphold the human rights of transgender students.

As this issue continues to be fought across the United States, the report states that “transgender youth are struggling to meet basic physical needs in their school environments.”

For Ryan Thoreson, “political fervor over this issues shouldn’t prevent schools from doing everything they can to ensure that all students have access to facilities they can use safely, reliably, and comfortably.” As the report outlines, regardless of gender identity, “students are in school to learn.”