Challenge to California’s School Transgender Law Fails to Make Ballot

Transgender California school students will
still be able to use the restrooms and join the sports teams for
whichever gender feels right for them. An effort by social
conservatives to force a law passed by the state legislature last
year onto the ballot has failed. Opponents of the law gathered
enough signatures, but more than 100,000 ended up
tossed out as invalid.

Here’s what the law
says:

“A pupil shall be permitted to participate in sex-segregated
school programs and activities, including athletic teams and
competitions, and use facilities consistent with his or her gender
identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the pupil’s
records.”

In November,
I wrote critically about efforts to kill the rule, arguing that
there’s no sign that fears that boys will pretend to be transgender
to harass and stalk girls in the bathrooms is based on anything
that has happened in the real world. Bob Egelko of the San
Francisco Chronicle
points out that school districts in Los Angeles and San
Francisco have already been operating under such guidelines. Given
the size of those school districts, no doubt abuse of the system
would have come out now were students inclined to do so.

Some commenters were a bit surprised at my stance in November,
so let me explain that while I have a lot of personal experience
with transgender people, my support for letting transgender teens
and their families make these choices is based on what I believe
are libertarian foundations. First of all, if I were to make a list
of people who have the authority to define a person’s gender, it
would start with the person involved and would not include any
government officials. Classification of people’s sex organs fails
to qualify for the list of things for which we need government.
While birth certificates are valuable tools, they are not sacred
objects brought down from on high like Moses bringing lugging down
the Ten Commandments. There is a certain component to transgender
skepticism that reads a lot like an appeal to authority.

Second, the state uses force or the threat of force to compel
students to attend school. As long as the state is going to
continue to do so, it can bloody well accommodate any noncriminal,
nondisruptive behavior by the students it is forcing to attend. As
I said back in November, school choice provides much better
solutions. California is becoming a fairly accepting state for
charter schools (more than
1,000 as of 2013). Perhaps there will eventually be a market
for schools designed to serve families with children working out
their gender identity and allies. But until that point, if the
state is going to force transgender students to spend the majority
of their time under their thumb, they can damn well use whatever
bathroom they want.