Mississippi’s education board has voted to defy the US federal government’s new guidelines on support for transgender students in schools, despite warnings from paediatricians and child welfare providers that anti-LGBTI bills will ‘exacerbate the violence, bullying and harassment’ of transgender children.

The State Department of Education in Mississippi voted unanimously to disobey national government guidelines on bathroom and locker room use for transgender students. As local news media waited to hear the decision handed down, Mississippi parents made their vehemently anti-LGBTI views clear to reporters.

According to local news outlet Mississippi News Now, one man said to a male reporter: ‘Do you want to go into the bathroom with my little girl? That is the same damn thing. That’s why we’re here for this bull crap that y’all trying to push on us.’

Another Mississippi parent fumed: ‘It’s an agenda. It’s an agenda that’s being shoved down everyone’s throat and it’s dangerous.’

Child welfare experts support federal transgender bathroom rules

Mississippi governor Phil Bryant had called the federal government’s new rules – which state students must be allowed to use bathrooms and locker rooms in schools that correspond to their gender identity – a ‘social experiment’.

‘The Mississippi Department of Education should disregard the so-called guidance the Obama administration has issued regarding public schools’ restroom policies,’ Bryant urged in a Facebook post before the vote.

The decision came as four leading national health, education and child advocacy groups called on state lawmakers to ‘reject the discriminatory bills being promoted in state legislatures targeting transgender children and their fundamental rights’.

The American Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO, the Association of Title IX Administrators, and the National Association of Secondary School Principals signed an open letter penned by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) that says transgender children are being ‘targeted and attacked’ by states opposing the new federal government guidelines on transgender bathroom use.

They join the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Counseling Association, the American School Counselor Association, the Child Welfare League of America, the National Association of School Psychologists, the National Association of Social Workers, and the National Education Association in signing the letter.

Anti-LGBTI laws are ‘needless and mean-spirited’

HRC president Chad Griffin pleaded with elected officials to stop ‘legislating hate and discrimination’ and instead ‘listen to this broad chorus of nonpartisan experts speaking out against dangerous bills that only exacerbate the violence, bullying and harassment the most vulnerable of our society already experience on a daily basis’.

According to the HRC, more than 30 bills have been introduced this year that deny transgender students access to the restrooms and locker rooms that are consistent with their gender identity. The HRC called the legislation ‘needless and mean-spirited’.

In more uplifting news, the University of North Carolina has confirmed it will not adhere to HB2, the state’s anti-LGBTI bathroom law.