Recently, the Obama administration issued a directive that mandated schools to permit students to use whichever restrooms and locker rooms aligned with their gender identity. On Sunday night, however, a federal judge in Texas temporarily blocked the directive after 13 states challenged the regulation. As things stand today, schools are not legally required to allow trans students to use the restrooms that align with their identities, and are entitled to come up with their own restroom regulations on an individual basis.

The Obama administration has argued that prohibiting trans students from using the restroom of their choice violates Title IX, an amendment that forbids gender discrimination in educational institutions that receive federal funding. While some critics of the directive claim they disagree with the administration's interpretation of Title IX, most of the directive's opposition comes down to bias and fear: Some parents of cisgender children don't want their kids sharing restrooms and locker rooms with transgender classmates. Many of these parents express concern that their children's safety will be at risk, or that predators will suddenly be free to roam the restrooms, but these fears are largely unfounded.

In fact, the people facing the most danger in public restrooms are transgender people themselves, and forbidding them from using the restroom that aligns with their gender identity is simply allowing that danger to continue. "Transgender individuals experience extremely high rates of harassment and violence when forced to use restrooms that accord with the sex assigned to them at birth," Chase Strangio, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's LGBT & HIV Project, tells SELF. Not only that, but anyone—cisgender or transgender—whose appearance or behavior doesn't align with gender norms is at risk. "Many people who transgress gender norms, particularly people of color, experience high rates of harassment and violence in restrooms," Strangio says.

One of the big dangers of prohibitive restroom laws is that they encourage everyday citizens to essentially play "gender police" in public restrooms, and even to confront strangers about their gender identity or behave in a predatory manner. "Gender policing in restrooms actually invites people to try to determine someone else's gender, giving someone with ulterior motives an excuse for spying on other occupants as 'detective work,'" says Elisabeth B. Flynn, senior communications director at the Mazzoni Center for LGBT Health and Wellbeing, tells SELF. "The people who've been confronted under these laws include trans and cisgender people. But because cisgender people are more likely to have ID that matches their gender identity, they are able to respond more easily."

There's nothing safe about potentially being asked to show ID in order to simply use a public restroom. "Anyone can be confronted [in a restroom] at any time for seeming to be 'faking' their gender," says Flynn. "The threat is to anyone, trans or cisgender, who does not conform to the 'enforcer's' stereotypes about gendered appearances...It opens up just about everyone to bullying, judgment, and potential physical harm over whether they have the 'right' to be in the bathroom they feel safest using."

Of course, on top of presenting a clear physical danger, this type of harassment also makes people vulnerable to emotional discomfort. "Trans people experience high rates of anxiety and distress when forced into restrooms that don't accord with their gender," Strangio tells SELF. This can be particularly troublesome in schools, when students are still finding their footing in the world and may be feeling especially vulnerable to bullying. "Forcing a girl who is transgender to use boys' restrooms and locker rooms, for example, would cause her to experience extreme anxiety and undermine her medical care," says Strangio. "It would also single her out for discrimination and violence. Forcing girls into spaces for boys just because they are trans outs them as trans to peers, colleagues and strangers and invites harassment and violence from others in those spaces."