Maines highest court:

Transgender students rights

were violated
Nicole Maines school was wrong to require the fifth-grader to
use a unisex bathroom, justices rule in a historic gender-identity
decision that could be a model for other states.
BY MATT BYRNE STAFF W RITER
mbyrne@pressherald.com | @mattbyrnePPH | 207-791-6303
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The rights of a transgender girl from Orono were violated when school administrators
made her use a staff bathroom at her elementary school instead of the girls restroom,
the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled Thursday.
The ruling is the first in which a state supreme court has affirmed a transgender
persons right to equal access to restrooms in places of public accommodation.

ADDITION AL PHOTOS
Transgender student Nicole Maines, now 16, and her family on the day of a historic Maine supreme court ruling. Gordon
Chibroski/Staff Photographer
 Nicole Maines, with her father Wayne Maines, left, and brother Jonas, speaks to reporters outside court in June 2013 after
arguments on the Maines lawsuit. I just hope (the justices) understand how important it is for students to go to school, get
an education, have fun ... and not have to worry about being bullied, Nicole said at the time. 2013 File Photo/The
Associated Press

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Search photos available for purchase: Photo Store

Lawyers representing Nicole Maines, who is now 16, said the decision could lay a
foundation for other states courts that are facing questions about the emerging rights
of people who identify as the opposite of their birth gender.

Im extremely proud of our state and our leaders, of what they did, said Wayne
Maines. His daughter was attending the Asa Adams School in Orono in 2007 when the
guardian of another student objected to her use of a communal girls bathroom.
Administrators intervened, telling Nicole to use a separate, unisex faculty bathroom.

In brief, emotional remarks Thursday, Wayne Maines spoke of the importance of

educating the public about transgender issues, and said the legal process worked for
his daughter.

It sends the message that you can believe in the system, he said.

The courts 5-1 ruling is the first interpretation of a 2005 amendment to the Maine
Human Rights Act that added language protecting transgender people in schools.

Decisions about how to address students legitimate gender identity issues are not to
be taken lightly, the court wrote in its majority opinion. Where, as here, it has been
clearly established that a students psychological well-being and educational success
depend upon being permitted to use the communal bathroom consistent with her
gender identity, denying access to the appropriate bathroom constitutes sexual
orientation discrimination.

The decision overturns a lower courts ruling that sided with the school district.
Arguing before the supreme court, attorneys for the district said a 1983 law requiring
schools to offer sanitary bathrooms segregated by sex created a pre-emptive exception
to the Maine Human Rights Act.

But in its ruling, the court said it would be illogical to interpret a statute designed to
require clean toilets as inconsistent with a law passed 22 years later, meant to ensure
equal access to public facilities regardless of sexual orientation or gender
identification, among other protected classes.
The two portions of the law may co-exist, the court wrote, without the purpose of
either provision trampling the purpose of the other.

SCHOOL HAD PLANNED FOR GENDER ISSUES

Although the case stems from an incident that occurred when she was in fourth grade,
Nicole Maines born Wyatt Maines had identified as a girl since as early as age 2.

School officials became aware of her gender identification when she was in the third
grade, when students and teachers began referring to Nicole as she.

Nicole was using the girls bathroom, which in the lower grades accommodated only
one person at a time. By the fourth grade, Nicole was dressing and appearing
exclusively as a girl, the court wrote.

In 2007, when Nicole was in the fourth grade, her family and school counselors,
teachers, doctors and others formed a plan for how her gender status would be
handled in future grades. Teachers and students were encouraged to stop using the
name Wyatt and call her Nicole.

She was later diagnosed with gender dysphoria, a recently formed medical diagnosis
that describes the psychological distress experienced by people whose gender
identification is contrary to the gender they had at birth.

Nicole has undergone extensive treatment to address the psychological and medical
effects. The groundbreaking regimen includes hormone therapy to stop puberty before
it begins, making gender reassignment surgery easier in the future.

The schools support staff recommended that when Nicole enter the fifth grade, she be
allowed to use the communal girls bathroom, part of the psychologically important
steps of living socially as a female. A faculty bathroom that was not gender-specific
was identified as an alternative if her use of the communal bathroom became an
issue.
Her use of the communal bathroom was uneventful until one boy, at the direction of
his legal guardian his grandfather followed Nicole into the girls bathroom twice,
arguing that he, too, was entitled to use it. In the ensuing controversy, the school
administration reversed its course, barring Nicole from using the communal girls
bathroom.

A SUCCESS FOR IDEALS OF EQUALITY

Thursdays ruling included a strongly worded concurring opinion by Chief Justice

Leigh Saufley, who lauded the work of the school system, which was working in
uncharted territory and undertook a rational and compassionate approach to the
challenges presented to it.

She called on the Legislature to correct a contradiction in the language of the Human
Rights Act, which includes sex as a protected class. In light of Thursdays ruling, it
appears logical that a restaurant, for instance, could not bar a man from using a
womens bathroom.

A similar point was made in the lone dissent, by Justice Andrew Mead, who agreed
with the opinion of the court but wrote that societal custom of gender-segregated
bathrooms is on collision course with the Human Rights Act. Mead called on the
Legislature to amend the 1983 cleanliness statute so its language would no longer be
in conflict with the law protecting transgender people.

Attorneys for the Maines family said the case is a step forward in affirming long-held
ideals of equality.

We think it was very important in this case that the court emphasize the principle that
we have in law, that the discomfort of other people cannot trump the law, said Ben
Klein, a senior attorney with Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, which
helped argue the case.

Klein said the schools staff was extraordinarily sensitive in planning for Nicoles
education, and he placed blame for the debacle on administrators who reversed that
decision.
All of those teachers and guidance counselors understood that the only way a
transgender girl could go to school (was) if she was treated as a girl, Klein said. It
was the school administrators who came in when one student tried to disrupt Nicoles
use of the girls restroom.

Superintendent Joanne Harriman, who was not leading the district when the issue
arose, deferred comment to the school attorney, Melissa Hewey of the Portland firm
Drummond Woodsum. Calls to the school board chairman, Wayne Scott, were not
returned.

Hewey said she was surprised by the ruling, but it brings clarity to the emerging issue
of transgender students in public schools.

At the core of that decision is a recognition that tolerance is important, Hewey said.

Matt Byrne can be contacted at 791-6303 or at:

mbyrne@pressherald.com