Detroit Free Press Editorial Board

Attorney General Bill Schuette announced Friday that he's joined a handful of other state attorneys general in challenging new U.S. Department of Education guidelines on school bathroom usage. Why? Schuette says he wants to protect the "dignity and privacy" of all Michigan students.

Except, it seems, transgender students.

In fact, we're not entirely sure what possible purpose this lawsuit could serve, aside from bolstering Schuette's already shiny conservative bona fides, in service of his presumed 2018 gubernatorial bid.

So, Mr. Schuette, we'd like to ease your mind on this count: We get it. We got it when you pressed the doomed defense of Michigan's unconstitutional same-sex marriage ban all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. We got it when you took a case against affirmative action to the high court. Everyone gets it. It's OK to stand down on this one.

Because on this one, the safety of kids is at stake -- just not the ones Schuette claims he is going to bat for.

Related: States with LGBTQ policies dispute threat of school bathroom predators

Transgender -- the "T" in LGBT -- is a term used to describe a person whose sex, or physical anatomy, does not match the gender that person instinctively understands themselves to be. While rights for gay and lesbian Americans have made great strides, transgender people still face open discrimination, are at greater risk for violence, and for bullying. Forty-one percent of transgender people will attempt suicide. Often, that's because trans kids are born into a world that doesn't accept them. A world in which they're derided and belittled by members of their community, or even the elected officials who should be working to ensure their safety.

(We're pleased to note that Gov. Rick Snyder declined to join the suit. A spokeswoman wrote in an email that the suit isn't something the governor wanted to focus on.)

Earlier this spring, the state Board of Education debated a set of voluntary guidelines aimed at helping school districts make schools safe for, and support, LGBT students. This came on the heels of a regressive North Carolina law requiring all North Carolinians to use the bathroom that corresponds to their birth sex, regardless of what gender that person identifies and presents as. The federal education department spoke up in May, issuing official guidance instructing schools to treat transgender students consistent with their gender identity. The federal guidance is, like the standards the state ed board has debated, voluntary -- although federal guidance can carry the implied threat non-compliant schools could lose federal funding or face civil rights lawsuits.

That's the guidance Schuette and his cohorts are suing to overturn.

Requiring trans students to use the bathroom that matches their sex, not their gender, violates that student's privacy, and exposes them to risk. Offering trans students a special bathroom, as some schools have done, is also a violation of those students' privacy. Worse, it marks them out as different, as other -- and that, again, exposes them to harm.

The funny thing is, folks who oppose trans-inclusive bathroom standards like to paint trans people as the threat, saying that allowing trans people to use the bathroom consistent with their gender identity invites predators to pretend to be trans in order to enter public bathrooms for nefarious purposes. But a Free Press review of states with guidelines protecting transgender students showed that such concerns are entirely unfounded.

Schuette is an adept politician. In this case, we expect that his electoral math will likely check out -- this lawsuit will almost certainly score points with the conservatives he hopes to court for the 2018 gubernatorial bid he's expected to mount.

That doesn't make Schuette's co-sign of this lawsuit any less wrong-headed. Because he's missing one key data point: For transgender Michigan students, this is something far more serious than political calculus.

Schuette is capable of great displays of compassion -- consider his efforts to end human trafficking, or to ensure that backlogged rape kits are tested. We wish he'd exhibit that compassion now.