Minnesota joins suit on behalf of transgender student
The state of Minnesota today announced it is joining a discrimination lawsuit against the Anoka-Hennepin School District.
According to the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, a transgender high school student on one of that district's swim teams had been using a boys' locker room until 2017. Then, however, the district began requiring the student to use a separate, so-called "enhanced privacy" boys' locker room.
State Attorney General Keith Ellison said his office is joining this lawsuit because it sees Anoka-Hennepin's actions as discriminatory.
"To have a sort of an isolated locker room which somebody wants to call euphemistically 'enhanced privacy' — it just sort of smacks of 'separate but equal,'" Ellison said. "Transgender people are members of our community. And they are entitled with the same dignity and respect that all the rest of us enjoy every day."
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The student and his mother are represented by Gender Justice and the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota. They initially filed their lawsuit at the end of last month, saying discrimination from the Anoka-Hennepin School District caused the transgender student "emotional distress and harm."
They are seeking damages and reimbursement for attorney's fees. They also ask that Anoka-Hennepin School District employees undergo training on gender identity discrimination and hostile environments.
ACLU-MN staff attorney David McKinney said denying the student in this case use of the same locker rooms as other boys "deprives him of equal access to education, programming and extracurricular activities like sports."
Anoka-Hennepin has not responded to MPR News' requests for comment.