#this news came as a surprise to me but ofc a pleasant surprise. aclu va is great

[satanfemme]

More good trans news coming out of Virginia!

A week ago I made a post about how, for the second year in a row, all of the anti-trans bills introduced in the Virginia General Assembly were defeated this session, but it was just announced today (2/15/24) that the ACLU of Virginia will also be suing the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) for the implementation of transphobic policies.

This is GREAT news. Despite Virginian law-makers blocking anti-trans legislation from passing the GA these past 2 years, in 2023 the VDOE (under the guidance of our Governor Youngkin) was able to insert transphobia into its model policies. These policies allow the forced outing of trans students, encourage deadnaming and incorrect pronoun usage, suggest that schools prohibit trans students from using their preferred restrooms, and can be used as a basis to prevent trans students from joining their preferred sports teams. These statewide policies exist for individual schools to model their own rules after, and many schools have outright rejected the transphobic guidelines suggested to them, but the schools that have adopted them have obviously fostered a harmful environment. And ofc these guidelines being written at all has only furthered the wave of transphobia in the US.

The ACLU VA is suing on behalf of 2 trans students who have been negatively affected by these policies this past year. If they succeed, it will undo VDOE's transphobic policies, discourage similar policies and laws from being written in the future, and send a message that Virginia is working towards becoming a safe state for LGBT people, despite what our current governor wants. This is a legal case the ACLU VA has been building since the VDOE 2023 policies were first proposed in 2022, and I can't stress how big of a deal this will be if it succeeds.