RICHMOND, Va. — School districts across Virginia are deciding whether or not to adopt the Department of Education's controversial model policies on transgender and nonbinary students. Now, the ACLU of Virginia is entering the conversation, too.
Attorney General Jason Miyares recently issued a legal opinion at the request of Gov. Glenn Youngkin, where he shared his belief that the model policies don't violate the U.S. Constitution, Title IX or the Virginia Human Rights Act.
He also wrote that school boards are required to adopt policies consistent with the model policies.
The Virginia ACLU's Legal Director, Eden Heilman, issued a statement in response, saying the policies not only "invite discrimination," but "require it."
"VDOE’s proposed model policies are part of a coordinated, national effort to erase transgender and nonbinary students from the classroom," Heilman said in the statement. "Attorney General Jason Miyares’ opinion defending the policies is every bit as cruel and misguided as the policies themselves."
The policies require students to use their assigned sex for bathrooms and school activities; written instruction from parents for a student to use names or gender pronouns that differ from the student's official record; and school divisions to disclose information about a student's gender to their parents, except when laws prohibiting the disclosure of information to parents apply.
“The Youngkin administration should be ashamed for ignoring the record-breaking number of Virginians who submitted comments opposing these policies, and for continuing to play politics with young people’s lives rather than address the very real needs of Virginia’s education system,” Heilman's statement said.
The Virginia Beach School Board considered adopting Youngkin's policies, but recently failed to pass them in a 5-5 vote. Suffolk is also looking into adopting the policies.
In Northern Virginia, several school districts declared that they would continue to adhere to existing policies.
"School boards continue to have an obligation to create safe, inclusive school environments for all students in compliance with state and federal law," Heilman's statement said.
In a statement alongside Miyares' opinion, he supported the administration's position by saying that parents are in the best position to work with children through life decisions, not the government.
"The Model Policies ensure that all students are treated with dignity and that parental involvement remains at the center," Miyares said. "These policies are fully compliant with the law, and school boards across the Commonwealth should support and implement them. It's not just common sense, it's the law."
