Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Holder orders women's restrooms open to male

On orders from Barack Obama’s Department of Justice, officials with the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith have given permission for a 38-year-old man to use the women’s restrooms on campus.
The report comes from Campus Reform.org, which explained that the individual also is seeking to have someone pay for a sex reassignment surgery to change from male to female.
Already living as a female, the individual, identified in the report as Jennifer Braly, started using women’s restrooms on campus, but quickly was the subject of complaints from women who saw him there.
The university had tried to make accommodations, designating gender-neutral restrooms in some buildings.
Not good enough, however.
Braly filed a complaint with the Civil Rights Division in the Department of Justice under Attorney General Eric Holder, school officials reported. The DOJ contacted the school.
“[T]he office of civil rights basically made its expectations through the attorney and the decision was made to respond to that direction,” said Mark Horn, the vice president of university relations. “[T]he DOJ complaint caused revisiting of our thinking.
“In the eyes of the law this individual [Braly] is entitled to use the bathroom that she identifies with,” Horn said.
The DOJ complaint was filed by Braly after the university told him to use any of the gender-neutral restrooms on campus.
“One problem to this is there are not unisex bathrooms in every building,” Braly wrote in an online essay about how other people should contribute to his surgery costs. “Especially the two main buildings where most of my classes are, so I have to go to a completely different building to use the restroom.”
While the university offered to convert other restrooms to gender-neutral, Braly said that wasn’t satisfactory.
The Campus Reform report said while anatomy matters little to the DOJ, it still remains a concern for other students.
“‘I disagree with allowing a male to use the female restrooms,” Amanda Shook, a senior at UA, told Campus Reform. “Even if they are a transgendered person, they are still a man, and should have to use the men’s restroom.”

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