Coy Mathis, a six-year-old transgender US girl who has been victim of discrimination will be able to return to school in the US after winning the right to use the girls’ bathroom.
The New York-based Transgender Legal Defence and Education Fund announced the ruling in favour of Coy Mathis and lawyers plan to explain the ruling in Denver, Colorado, on Tuesday.
The group filed the complaint on behalf of Coy’s parents Kathryn and Jeremy Mathis, claiming that the first-grader had been discriminated against at Eagleside Elementary School in Fountain, near Colorado Springs.
Fountain-Fort Carson School District 8 has declined to discuss the case, but Coy’s parents said they were told in December that she had to either use the bathroom in the teachers’ lounge or one in the nurse’s office after the holiday break. The Mathises feared going along with that would stigmatise Coy and open her up to bullying.
Coy was therefore home-schooled for the rest of the school year as the complaint was considered.
Biologically, Coy, 6, is a boy, but to her parents, three sisters and brother, family members and the world, Coy is a transgender girl.
School districts in many states, including Colorado, have enacted policies that allow transgender students to use the bathroom of the gender with which they identify.
Sixteen US states, including Colorado, have anti-discrimination laws that include protections for transgender people.
