Transgender Fountain 1st grader banned from girls bathroom, discrimination claim filed
The parents of a transgender 6-year-old have filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Division because Eagleside Elementary School in Fountain has banned the 1st grader from using the girl’s bathroom.
The child, Coy Mathis, was born male but identifies as female. She has attended the school since December 2011.
“This is significant for both Colorado, and nationally,” said Michael Silverman, executive director of the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund, who is representing the family. “For Colorado, it is the first test of the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act as related to access to bathrooms by transgender students.
“On a national level, as we see more and more transgender people coming out at younger and younger ages, people will be watching what happens in Colorado.”
In November, a Maine state court ruled that a school district did not violate a transgender student’s rights under the Maine Human Rights Act when it prohibited her from using the girls’ restroom.
Transgender identity is a relatively new issue in the nation and so there is little uniformity among school district policies. Some in Colorado, including Boulder Valley Schools, have already crafted detailed policies citing the state Anti-Discrimination Act. Others have not.
Boulder’s four-page set of guidelines specifically addresses restroom accessibility, stating that “students shall have access to the restroom that corresponds to their gender identity consistently asserted at school.”
The policy was developed about five years ago because “the district has long been committed to the inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity,” said district spokesman Briggs Gamblin.
Every two years, the district participates Boulder County’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which “consistently has found one of the high-risk groups for teen suicide are GLBT or questioning. It’s critically important that these students feel included — part of the community, not separated from it,” Gamblin said.
Coy Mathis wears girls’ clothing and students and staff used the female pronouns when referring to her. But Fountain-Fort Carson School District 8 administrators decided over winter break that the child should use the boys bathroom, or the staff restroom or one in the school nurse’s office.
That decision 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,” said Wm. Kelly Dude, a lawyer representing the school district wrote in a Dec. 28 letter to Silverman.
Dude argued that the district is in compliance with the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act because “Coy attends class as all other students, is permitted to wear girls’ clothes, and is referred to as the parents have requested,” and was allowed access to single-user restrooms used by employees or gender-neutral restrooms in the school’s health room.
Coy’s parents, Kathryn and Jeremy Mathis, took her out of school. She is being homeschooled until the issue is resolved.
The family will appear at a press conference at 11 a.m. Wednesday on the west steps of the State Capitol to announce the filing of the complaint.
“It’s important for us to talk about this, because a lot of people have been so afraid to be their true selves for so long,” Kathryn Mathis said. “They’ve know from very young children who they are, but were afraid to tell. We want to help create a society where it’s OK to be who you are.”
She said that as soon as Coy began to talk, she insisted that she was a girl, not a boy.
As parents, they were sad and upset when they heard that Coy could no longer use the girls bathroom at school, Kathryn Mathis said.
“This automatically singles her out and stigmatizes her,” she said. “It sets her up for future harassing and bullying, and creates an unsafe environment. The school has a wonderful opportunity to teach students that differences are OK, and we should embrace their differences, instead of teaching them to discriminate against someone who is a little different.”
Colleen O’Connor: 303-954-1083, coconnor@denverpost.com or Follow Colleen O’Connor on Twitter.
Sounds like the school is addressing this family’s request for their child, so why are they complaining? If the child can use a private bathroom, why do the parents have an issue? Don’t the natural girls have rights to have a private bathroom space without males around? What about their rights? This one child may self identify as a girl but how do his peers perceive him? Don’t forget, their sexual and moral development is in progress as well.
As more and more parents refuse to mutilate their children (which is what doctors and hospitals usually do to children born with both sets of genitals—which was not mentioned in this article, but could be a cause of the gender identity issue) and allow their children to figure out what gender they are, more and more of this will be happening. I applaud Boulder county for coming up with a plan, despite generally not agreeing with Boulder’s liberal policies. This school district could take a lesson from Boulder and join the current century.
Boy not allowed to use the girl’s rest room. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. The school has offered reasonable alternatives, but the parents are determined to use this young boy to win a lottery jackpot via lawsuit.
I hope the parents lose big and have to pay the school’s legal costs.
Poor little kid. I hope the parents got him therapy before pushing this so far. 6 just seems awfully young to develop a sexual identity. Hope it all works out for him/her.
I agree that it is not discrimination because the other female students have rights too. At work, we had a designated bathroom for their use.
I don’t think the parents have pushed HER at all. Intersexuality (or hermaphrodism or disorders of sex development–google any of those for an explanation) occurs a lot more than you might think. True hermaphodism (with 2 sets of fully functional genitals) occurs as often as 1 in 2,000 births. While the article doesn’t state it, this adorable little girl could very well be genetically female (two X chromosomes) but because of hormonal malfunctions during pre-natal development, she grew a . Before we knew about and could test chromosomes, doctors just lopped it off (leaving the girl unable to experience sexual satisfaction). Or if the parents left it alone, they would raise the child as a boy and wonder why he was such a sissy who liked to play with dolls. Thankfully some of us have become more enlightened over the decades and have learned about these things and no longer judge by those sorts of things.
As for 6 being young, you must not have kids. My grandson is 17 months old, and is all boy. He loves his stuffies and even has dolls, but he loves his cars more.
Oh, and for all of you men who claim to be standing up for the rights of the other girls, have you ever been in a woman’s public bathroom? One hint—we don’t have urinals, so unless somebody is peeking into the stall, they would have no way of knowing if she had a or not. She probably does all of her business sitting down.
My father used to play with dolls a lot. He grew up into a nice men. No one got an idea to make him into a girl. I had brothers wore always pants and was a tomboy, played soccer and now i am happily married have children and do not have thoughts about who i am. This should be illegal to allow parents to screw up their child like this.
This going along with the childs ideas may be detrimental to the little one and may be just stupidity or progressive, but mistaken feeling of the parents.
Talk about off-topic. This story is not about a hermaphrodite. It about a normal little boy whose parents want him to be a girl. Don’t tell me that a 1st grader is making this decision on his own.
Six is a very common age for transgender people to identify and adult transgender people say that they knew from their first memories, usually. So why make them suffer all the way through their childhoods? There are several families in Boulder in this situation now, and believe me not one set of these parents chose to be there. They are coping as well as they can and trying to do the best thing for their kids. The rate of suicide for transgender kids even at very young ages is high. So again, shut up when you talk about removing the kid from these parents etc. You’d be creating a WORSE environment, I guarantee it, not to mention the brain damage that comes from disrupting attachment. There are plenty of books you can read, but the memoirs of Jenny Boylan are a good place to start.
And what’s the big deal anyway? So many of us had co-ed bathrooms in college. I’d walk in and there’d be guys using the urinals right there. Who cared? What’s the difference if it’s in school or the workplace? I had brothers. I had friends groups of friends I went hiking with or walking around with and they’d take a whiz. I always use whatever bathroom is available in a coffee shop or restaurant because I don’t want to wait, regardless of the label. We all use mixed gender outhouses, usually, when hiking in national forests or parks and send the kids in there too. WHO CARES if someone sees a ? Do you really think going to the bathroom is that perfect and orderly in life and no girl is ever going to see a guy whizzing by the side of the road? Jeez. What exactly are these parents and other kids being protected from, esp in a girls’ bathroom where there are stall doors?
Little Coy is very brave. The school needs to craft a policy for students like her, so that other students put through such an ordeal.
It’s not a sexual identity. It’s a gender identity. There’s a difference. Her sexual identity remains to be seen.
If this little girl knows she is a female…let her go in the girl’s bathroom! End of story!
As others have mentioned, the school, parents, and the little girls forced to use the restroom with this little boy should have RIGHTS, too, that is, to not have this gender invasion of their restroom. Perhaps, one of the groups that represents issues of a conservative nature, would be interested in helping-out the school, parents, and little girls; such as, The Liberty Counsel, Alliance Defense Fund, or American Civil Rights Union (not ACLU).
It doesn’t sound like there is a civil suit here, only a complaint filed with the state’s civil rights division. There is no money here – after all, you can’t sue the government – only a matter of correcting policy.
What about the rights of the other 200 or so little girls in the school. Should they be forced to use the same bathroom as the boy? It doesn’t seem right to make 200 other kids adjust their morals and beliefs to accommodate one person. Shouldn’t this kid’s parents be respectful of the other kids and their decision not to be transgender? It seems that far too often tolerance and respect of others only goes one way.
If the “true self”, in this case has boy parts, which is what seems to be said in the article, then it comes down to someone and their parents being “so afraid to be their true selves.” Not the other way around.
If this child has boy parts, “it’s ok to be who you are.” If you have boy parts, go to the boys room.
A person with boy parts, wearing girl clothes, does not make a girl. No?
The novelty of lawyering someone with boy parts into the bathroom meant for people with girl parts is an indication of how screwed up earth is capable of lawyering anything imaginable.
I can ride in a train on train tracks in Colorado and try to convince you I’m floating in a boat on the ocean and even have a lawyer help insist I’m floating on a boat but at the end of the day I’m still on a train on train tracks. Or am I really on the boat because that’s where I believe I am and that lawyer said I was? Wink or no.
If the individual has birth problems with boy and or girl parts, then it’s a difficult situation for everyone involved. It sounds like that problem exists for many citizens and I was not aware of it. Those citizens should be given the most compassion available to help them live comfortably among fellow citizens.
-This article doesn’t seem to be indicating that’s the case however.
Either way, it would seem privacy, in this case would be desirable. For the sake of the child. Perhaps privacy is against the motives of the parent’s agenda???
Agree gender identity & sexual identity are 2 completely differently things. Adult sexual overlays are being transferred to the toileting of children.
6 is about exploring the identifying process- as girl, boy, super hero, unicorn, tree, train, whatever . In children it usually changes as interests change. As a lot of adults have experienced, self changes over time.
finally separate is NOT equal; it is inherently unequal & discriminatory . Sooner our children learn that the better we all are
Title=”Look at This Logically, not Emotionally”
Garden Girl, and others, thank you for clarifying, a couple of times, that “sexual identity” is not “GENDER identity”. Easy Explanation: The brain is able to develop an gender identity of it’s own, whether the same or different from the physical genital organs. This is apparently what has occurred in this circumstance, the child identifies as a girl (in her brain) even though she has male genital organs. Let me clarify… she did not DECIDE to be a girl, in her own mind she IS a girl. We allow this child to grow up as a girl, though we don’t want to force that decision on her (she’s too young) by doing any surgery on her genitals.
All of the little girls think she is a girl… they have no knowledge of anything else. If this little girl goes to the girls restroom, and she goes into a stall and pees sitting down on the toilet with the door closed, like every other little girl, they still know no difference. All the other little girls see her as a girl, because she has a girls name and she is called by female pronouns. They don’t know the difference, they don’t suspect anything, they never would. (Now if she was showing her sexual organs to the other little girls, that would not be OK, but it would not be OK for any of the little girls or boys at that age, right?–that’s when we make them go to the single/private bathroom!) If this little girl was forced to use the boys bathroom, in her eyes she would not understand, she would be embarrassed, she would be confused, it would be as traumatizing for her as it would be for any little girl. How do you think the boys in that restroom and the school would react? Do you think they would just accept it all? They don’t know that this little girl has a male genital organ. She’s a girl in their eyes. They could do nothing BUT to make fun of her, and probably chase her out of the boys bathroom. Now, if she is forced to use a gender neutral bathroom in the nurses room or the “adults bathroom”, it singles her out, it makes her feel unwelcome, different, and the other children to see her differently; all of the children cling to this and begin to make fun of it, taunt and criticize her, and it begins to traumatize this little girl and begins a cycle of unhappiness, shame, etc., that ultimately drives children who are singled out as different (LGBTIQ) into a downward spiral of unhappiness and causes them to want to die to run away from it all, to commit suicide as if that’s the only way out of what they feel. It’s very hard to have that much negative input come to you when you are young. I grew up gay, I know. The parents are doing and asking for exactly the correct thing, and they are brave setting a new standard for their child.
Let’s look at this in a different way. As long as some of you are projecting “sexuality” and “morals” on these little 6 year olds, what about making all of the soft, effeminate 6 year old boys who don’t like sports or trucks and cars, who play with girls and dolls (all stereotypes) force them to go to the girls bathroom, because they might be gay when they grow up… Likewise with the little girls who don’t like to wear dresses, play with ball, etc. We don’t want these boys/grils to be in the bathroom with the regular boys/girls because might be sexually attracted to them? – I mean, who of you want your little boys/girls to be in the same room as a “homosexual”? Who wants these liberal morals forced upon your innocent little children? Does that logic make sense? No, of course it does not… (let’s only HOPE you agree). We don’t know whether any of these children are going to be straight, bisexual, or gay/lesbian, let alone we know if they are going to be murderers, bank robbers or kidnappers.
Gender identity is completely different from sexual identity. If a child from a very early age identifies as the gender opposite of their birth sex, then they are likely transgender, and the absolutely best way to handle that is to treat that child as the gender with which they identify.
Who knows, maybe the best way to handle this issue for all schools is to have unisex bathrooms for all the children!