One More Time: US DOJ Agreement

I wrote about the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Education agreement with the California's Arcadia School District twice before but not about higher education. The blog Inside Higher Education had this to say about the agreement,

Equal Access at All Levels
July 29, 2013
By
Allie Grasgreen

Last week's settlement between the U.S. Education Department's Office for Civil Rights and a California school district may have been issued at the K-12 level, but the newly clear message that federal laws prohibit discrimination based on gender identity applies to colleges too, experts say.
[…]
The settlement is also a first in that it deals with access to educational programs, facilities and activities -- which is really what Title IX is all about -- whereas the 2010 letter [the "Dear Colleague" letter] related more to school climate, harassment and bullying. The issue is not hypothetical; colleges report that they are enrolling more transgender students who are requesting various services and policies -- anti-bias rules, access to bathrooms, ability to join athletic teams -- and at some institutions, they haven't been satisfied with the response.

The author goes on to say what I said, while this in not a policy like the EEOC policy on employment discrimination it does show is that the Departments of Justice and Education believe that the laws do cover gender identity and expression and that the laws also cover sex-segregated facilities.

"It actually is groundbreaking," Erin Buzevis, the law professor at Western New England School of Law who runs the Title IX Blog, said in an e-mail. "By taking one such case, OCR signals its willingness to take similar cases in the future, and there's no reason to think those cases wouldn't also include college students."

The actual agreement between the U.S. DOJ & Ed also requires the Arcadia School District to provide training

Finally, OCR required the school district to hire a consultant with expertise in child development and transitioning youth to help address these issues and make sure the changes are thorough and lasting. Colleges might want to do something similar, Orr said.

Just remember that the Departments of Justice and Education agreement with the Arcadia School District is not a court order but an agreement between two parties and a court could have a different ruling or the next President could put an entirely different Attorney General and Commissioner with their own interpretation of the law.