A complaint is being filed on behalf of a transgender child who feels her civil rights have been compromised. CNN reported that Colorado's Coy Mathis was born with male sex organs but identifies her self as female and has been using the girl's restroom at the school. Now officials at the school are forbidding her to use the girl's restroom.
The complaint was made to a Colorado civil rights agency and is the first to challenge a restriction on bathroom usage for transgender individuals.
Coy attends Eagleside Elementary school in Fountain, Colorado and is midway through kindergarten. Reuters reported that with the school's knowledge Coy has been using the girls restroom until late December when the principal told her parents that she would no longer be allowed to use I and can now access either the boy's restroom or the facilities reserved for employees of the school.
Lawyers and Coy's parents are asking the school to reconsider on grounds that not allowing her to use the girl's bathroom and singling her out as the only girl in school not allowed to use that bathroom will cause her psychological damage, reported Reuters.
"Since her earliest ability to express herself, she has told the world what would be obvious to anyone who spends a minute with her that she is a little girl," said Michael Silverman to Reuters who is executive director of the New York-based Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund.
The fund filed the complaint on behalf of Coy and her family.
They also noted that the bathroom banning goes against Colorado's Anti Discrimination Act. The act states that prohibiting people from using the bathroom due to sexual orientation or transgender status is not allowed.
"Forcing Coy to be the only girl in school that has to use a different bathroom from every other student is the equivalent of painting a bull's-eye on her back," Silverman added to Reuters.
"In a letter urging the district to reconsider, Silverman wrote that the state Civil Rights Commission had issued regulations under the act that specifically required schools to allow transgender students access to "gender-segregated facilities that are consistent with their gender identity," including restrooms, locker rooms and dormitories," reported Reuters.
The District's attorney said that their decision was in line with state laws because Coy "attends class as all other students, is permitted to wear girls' clothes and is referred to as the parents have requested."
The district said in the letter that they "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 school district letter added that a court in Maine last November upheld a similar decision made by a school district there, ruling there was no violation of Maine's Human Rights Act when a transgender Coy's parents Jeremy and Kathryn Mathis are no home-schooling Coy until the dispute is settled.
"When they first told us what they were going to do, we were very shocked," Kathryn Mathis said to Reuters.
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