Graduates Get $20,000 Each After Transgender Restroom Dispute
A Pennsylvania school agreed to pay three students $20,000 each in a settlement allowing the students to use the bathroom with which they identify.
The details of the costly settlement — totaling $60,000 awarded to the students and $75,000 to their attorney — were released Tuesday after the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette requested the information from the Pine-Richland School District under the state’s Right-to-Know law, according to US News.
U.S. District Court Judge Mark Hornak sent out a 48-page ruling in February 2016 explaining why the Pine-Richland policy discriminated against students who identify as transgender and violated the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protections Clause, according to the Post-Gazette.
The students — two of whom identify as female but were born male, and one who identifies as male but was born female — sued the school in October 2016 when it wouldn’t allow them to use the restroom corresponding with their gender identity rather than their birth sex. The school initially enforced its bathroom policies in response to complaints from parents who felt that allowing students to use the wrong bathroom violated the privacy of the other students.
By agreeing to settle, the school now allows students to use whichever bathroom “consistently and uniformly [matches their] asserted gender identity.”
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