Mayor Eric Adams said on Thursday that he would push the New York City Department of Education to change its policy of allowing young people in schools to use the bathroom most closely associated with their gender.
“We are going to always respect how one identifies themselves,” Mr. Adams said on Thursday.
But “I do not believe a safe environment is allowing boys and girls to use the same facility at the same time,” the mayor added, speaking at an unrelated news conference in front of the United Nations’s headquarters.
The mayor said he would explore whether he had the executive power to force a change in school policy, saying, “I’m going to look at my authority and power to change that.”
Mr. Adams’s remarks came two days after the Trump administration sent letters to three U.S. school districts, including New York, writing that it was “deeply concerned” about the city’s policies toward transgender students.
Denying the use of facilities because of a person’s gender identity is considered unlawful discrimination under the state’s Human Rights Law. New York City’s guidelines on supporting transgender children also state that students cannot be forced to use a bathroom that conflicts with their gender identity.
But Craig W. Trainor, the federal Education Department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, told city officials that New York’s rules conflict with Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination at educational institutions that receive federal funding.
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The post Adams Says He Will Revisit N.Y.C. Schools’ Bathroom Gender Policy appeared first on New York Times.
