Families contend with fallout of president’s decision to roll back protections for students’ use of bathrooms and locker rooms aligning with identity

Kimberly Shappley was fighting back tears. It was the morning after the Trump administration rolled back Obama-era protections allowing transgender students to use the bathroom of their gender identity, and she was reckoning with how the announcement would impact her kindergarten-age daughter, a transgender girl named Kai.

“Last night was hard,” Shappley said, taking a deep, ragged breath. “You look at your baby and you realize you have a president who is against you.”

The Shappleys are among thousands of US families who have been bracing themselves for the Trump administration’s impact on transgender rights. Trump has stocked his cabinet with, and appointed as his vice-president, politicians who have a history of hostility toward LGBT rights. And for many trans adults and the parents of young trans students, the fear for their safety and wellbeing began to percolate just hours after Trump was elected.

But Wednesday marked the first time that the Trump administration loudly staked out a position in the fight over protections for trans individuals. For all of Trump’s talk about being supportive of LGBT rights, his justice and education departments will no longer argue that federal civil rights protect the ability of trans students to use their preferred bathroom or locker room.

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Now, trans students all over the country and their families are contending with the consequences.

For Kimberly and Kai Shappley, the rollback feels very personal. The state of Texas, where they make their home in the Dallas suburb of Pearlands, had been leading the legal fight against the Obama administration to allow schools to make their own policy.



The superintendent of Pearlands ISD, Kai’s school district, went out of his way to declare that he would ignore Obama’s guidance. Over her mother’s objections, Kai is barred from using the girls’ bathrooms in her elementary school; she is required to use a bathroom at the nurses’ station.

The White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, said this week that Trump wants cases like Kai’s to devolve to the states and individual school districts. But what will ultimately happen in cases like Kai’s could depend on a handful of ongoing legal battles.

However, with the guidance no longer in place, Shappley’s hope that things would resolve in her daughter’s favor has been shaken.



“Now it’s like, what are we going to do with her?” Shappley said. “She’s a beautiful little girl who just wants to be treated like all the other kids. She doesn’t have a disease. I don’t see how they can justify this.”

‘We had a president who was standing for us’

Just a few years ago, Shappley was an unlikely person to be rooting for the Obama administration’s transgender policies. A born-again Christian minister, Shappley was a Tea Party backer who didn’t give much thought to LGBT rights.

Then it became clear that her child identified as a girl. After several conversations with child psychiatrists, Shappley was off the fence. She has embraced her daughter’s identity and found it making sense with her faith.

“Kai is proud of who she is, and she knows that the Lord designed her this way,” Shappley said. “She wasn’t a mistake, she was his plan and his idea.”

Shappley assumed the rest of the world would understand Kai just as easily as she did. In May 2015, she approached the school nurse, the principal and Kai’s teacher, thinking they were the only ones who needed to know that her daughter is transgender, and that they would agree that Kai should use the girls’ bathrooms.

Instead, the school district forced Kai to use the bathroom in the nurse’s office whenever she was in the library, gym class or cafeteria. (Until she graduates kindergarten, her classroom has a unisex restroom.) The decision set Kai apart from other children and caused at least one instance of humiliation: one day, the bathroom in the nurse’s office was locked, and Kai peed her pants.

It was around the same time that the Obama administration indicated that the justice and education departments would take action against schools refusing to give trans students access to the bathrooms or locker rooms consistent with their gender identity.

“We had a president who came out and said, ‘I see you,’” said Shappley. “I sobbed. Even though my state was still attacking us, I knew that we had a president who was standing for us. He was listening to us. And that gives you hope and comfort to keep you going forward.”

Now, several legal challenges may still determine what comes of Obama’s policy. On 28 March, the US supreme court will hear arguments on behalf of Gavin Grimm, a high school student who claims his Virginia school discriminated against him by banning him from the boys’ restrooms. Lawyers for Grimm argue that existing federal laws against sex discrimination extend to bias against trans people.

In a separate case, the attorneys general for more than 20 states are suing to block the Obama administration’s policy on trans students. They argue, in part, that allowing trans students to use the restrooms and locker rooms of their choice may violate other students’ privacy. The fate of that case is uncertain now that Trump had rescinded the guidance.

Shappley resents it when she hears other parents say the issue is one of privacy, or of a boy in the girls’ facilities. It’s not as though children walk around naked in the locker room, Shappley said. And not only does Kai not identify as a boy, with her pierced ears and blonde bob, she doesn’t look out of place among other girls.

Speaking on Thursday morning, Ginger Clifton, the mother of a trans teen in Michigan, said that when her daughter’s school barred her from the girls’ bathroom, it served only to single her out. She and her daughter fought to reverse the policy and won.

“Two years later, there have been no incidents, no complaints and no compromise of privacy of any student”, including of her daughter, Clifton said.

Shappley and her daughter are looking at a much longer fight.

“I really thought this was one thing we weren’t going to have to fight about,” she said. “I thought, this is going to be easy.”