Betsy DeVos Tells Transgender Kids To Make A Safe Space In The Bushes If They Gotta Pee So Bad

Nope.

Good news, transgender kids! The Betsy DeVos Department Of Teaching Kids To Read Good And Do Other Stuff Good Too has decided that you get to pee! But yeah, like, not at school or anything, so could you take care of that at home, or maybe in a bush? It's not that Betsy DeVos hates you -- Jesus says fundamentalist assholes like DeVos aren't allowed to hate people -- but rather that she is going to use her power as a Trump asshole to make sure if you are discriminated against at school, you can't complain to the Department of Education. What? You have to pee? Well you should have thought about that before you offended Betsy DeVos's fundamentalist dickwad sentiments by being born transgender.

 Buzzfeed reports:

The Education Department has told BuzzFeed News it won't investigate or take action on any complaints filed by transgender students who are banned from restrooms that match their gender identity, charting new ground in the Trump administration's year-long broadside against LGBT rights. [...]

... [O]n Thursday, Liz Hill, a spokesperson for the agency, responded “yes, that’s what the law says” when asked again if the Education Department holds a current position that restroom complaints from transgender students are not covered by a 1972 federal civil rights law called Title IX.

Asked for further explanation on the department’s position, Hill said Friday, “Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, not gender identity.”

Hill added that maybe the Ed Department might look at complaints from transgender kids on other issues that don't have to do with the potty, because somehow those count under Title IX, but not potty stuff, because the law doesn't even say "potty" one time.

This is funny because ACTUALLY the courts have been coming to the conclusion, like the Obama Justice Department did, that because gender identity is, at heart, about gender (it is right there in the name of it!), then yes, discriminating based on gender identity is sex discrimination, and that it's really weird it took people so long to figure that out in the first place. Indeed, as Buzzfeed notes, appeals courts for both the 6th and 7th circuits have come to that conclusion. So in essence, case law has been developing rapidly in the direction of letting trans kids use the damn bathroom, but Betsy DeVos is standing athwart that progress and telling trans kids they'll just have to STOP (peeing in a bathroom that matches them). Betsy DeVos is fucked up.

Let's hear it from an Obama person:

Catherine Lhamon, who led the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights during the Obama administration, said the new school-restroom policy is legally dubious.

“Until now, the official position of the Department has been that Title IX protects all students and that they were evaluating how that protection applies to the issue of bathroom access,” she said in an email to BuzzFeed News. “This new categorical bar of civil rights protection for transgender children required to attend schools every day ignores the text of the law, courts' interpretation of the law, the stated position of the Department to date, and human decency.”

But now that Betsy DeVos, who only is running the Education Department because of an odd kind of rich white Republican affirmative action where rich white Republicans get cushy jobs in the Trump administration as long as they're as greedy and stupid as Trump is, is the sheriff of schools, it's open season on transgender kids, just like it's open season on pretty much everybody who isn't white, straight, Republican and Christian these days in Trump's America.

Of course, this is all happening after a year of Trump assaults on trans folk in general, and the entire LGBT population in a broader sense -- military trans bans and euphemistically named "religious freedom" executive orders and Jeff Sessions acting like a common Jeff Sessions,   that fucking guy!

 Apropos of nothing, the teachers' unions have released their report cards for Betsy DeVos's first year in office, and surprise, 80,000 teachers give her solid F's on everything besides "being a total loser dickhead with none of the qualifications to run an education department."

For that one, she got an A+!

 Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter RIGHT HERE.  

 Do you love Wonkette? Do you want Wonkette to NEVER DIE? Then click here to pay our bills! 

[ Buzzfeed ]