RICHMOND, Va. — The public now has the chance to weigh in on the Virginia Department of Education's (VDOE) 2022 model policies regarding the treatment of transgender students in the state's public schools.
Thousands of comments were submitted just hours after the public comment window opened at midnight Monday.
The new policies would require parents of transgender students to request their child's school address them as such. Name and pronoun changes would also require a request from parents, as well as official legal documents and court orders noting the change.
Students would be required to use the bathroom that aligns with their sex, except to the extent that the federal law requires otherwise.
Parents can also deny school-provided counseling services.
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IN-DEPTH:Click here to read the complete draft policies | Click here to read the previous policies
The policy reads: "The Department also fully acknowledges the rights of parents to exercise their fundamental rights granted by the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to direct the care, upbringing, and education of their children."
Hundreds of comments suggest the change in policies will harm transgender and nonbinary students, saying the policies could essentially require students to "come out" to families that will not honor their desire to go by a different name or be identified as a different gender.
"In a perfect world, children would have a supportive environment in both school and at home," said Beth O'Connor with the Virginia Rural Health Association. "Unfortunately, we know that there are parents, for whatever reason, would not be supportive or may even reject a child. And we know that children who experience that kind of rejection, because of their gender identity, are eight times more likely to attempt suicide. And that's a very frightening statistic for us."
Comments in support of the model policies suggest parents should be kept informed regarding all matters pertaining to their child.
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Once the public comment window closes on Wednesday, Oct. 26, VDOE staff will recommend any edits or revisions to the draft that are warranted. Once revisions are made, the policies must be approved by the state superintendent.
"When they issue their final policy, if they want to keep the policy as is, they need to respond to those concerns and explain why, despite those concerns, they think this is the best policy," said Professor Jack Preis with the University of Richmond's School of Law.
Preis said he does not expect massive changes to come before an approval, saying the policies are used as guidelines, not law, citing ambiguity in transgender protection laws for schools.
"The Youngkin administration has made a different judgement, sort of at a basic level, of what it means to be trans and what trans rights are, and that's not something that the comments are going to pierce in a way, so I don't expect it will change very much," he said.
RELATED: Richmond school leaders on new transgender polices: 'This is unacceptable'
"There's good reason to think that discrimination on the basis of gender identity is unlawful in the school context, but we don't have a clear law. The Youngkin administration is sort of stepping into this sort of vacuum saying, 'Hey, let's push it this direction, given there's ambiguity,'" Preis said.
Preis expects an approved policy to come within the next two or three months.
Per Virginia code, school boards shall adopt policies that are consistent or more comprehensive than the approved policy.
On Sept. 19, the Richmond School Board announced its rejection of the draft policies, saying it "affirms the commitment to providing protections for all students regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression."
IN-DEPTH: How Central Virginia school districts are responding to new transgender student policies
Preis said he does expect families of transgender students to file lawsuits against individual school districts that do adopt the approved policy, citing potential violations of Title IX or the Virginia Human Rights Act.
“The goal of this document is to persuade local school districts who may not have expertise on trans kids, to pursue a particular approach to treating those kids. Just because this document encourages that particular approach does not mean that school districts are insulated from lawsuits," Preis said. "I expect a lot of students or parents of students will file lawsuits challenging the decisions that the local districts make. And it's irrelevant whether or not the local district made that decision because of the model policy or any other reason it might have made that decision.”
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