A number of parents are outraged after a Maryland school district instructed teachers and administrators to allow transgender students bunk with other students of the gender with which they identify - and not alert their parents.
According to the Washington Times, Bob Mosier, the district's chief communications officer, gave the controversial instructions in a video of a June meeting titled "Supporting Transgender Students in School".
"Many of you might be asking yourselves, 'So I'm at an overnight field trip, and I have student who's biologically a male, identifies as a female and we've worked with that student and her family, and that student wants to sleep in the dorms, or whatever sleeping arrangements are, with the females. They don't want to sleep in a room by themselves; they want to sleep with the rest of the females. So what do we do?'" he says in the video.
"And the answer is, they sleep with the females. That's not the easy answer; it's the right answer. And in some cases, it's going to cause issues, because ... the private information piece doesn't allow you to share that with parents of all of the other campers. Right? So that's difficult," he continued.
Another school official also shared how issues of identity are "private" and not to be discussed with other parents.
The controversial case mirrored one in Charlotte, N.C., where teachers have been advised to stop calling children "boys and girls," according to a training presentation on transgender issues. Instead, teachers are expected to identify the children as either "students" or "scholars."
In May, the Obama administration issued a directive to public schools across the country telling every public school district in the country to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms that match their gender identity. While the Justice Department called the guidelines non-binding, saying they had no legal consequences, they were also backed up by a threat to withhold federal education money from states that refused to comply.
However, on Sunday, a federal judge in Texas blocked the order, saying that the law about the biological and anatomical differences between male and female students "is not ambiguous."
The office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican who frequently sues the Democratic Obama administration, said he was pleased with a decision against "illegal federal overreach."
At least 11 states - Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Tennessee, Maine, Louisiana, Utah, Arizona and Georgia - have similarly sued the Obama administration in May over its transgender directive.
