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L.G.B.T.Q. Rights Cases Stall Under DeVos, Report Finds [1]

['Erica L. Green']

Date: 2019-07-29

WASHINGTON — Students who said they were discriminated against because of their sexual orientation or gender identity were significantly less likely to get any relief from the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights under the Trump administration than they were under the Obama administration, according to a report released Monday.

The report, released by the liberal Center for American Progress and based on the Education Department’s own data, provided the first analysis of how students who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer have fared in the first half of the Trump administration. The administration has reshaped policy to exclude civil rights protections for transgender people in most areas of government and has scaled back legal protections for gay people.

The report found that the Trump administration was less likely to investigate claims of discrimination filed by the students — and more likely to dismiss them. The percentage of complaints that resulted in a school being required to take action to remedy the discrimination under the current administration was nine times lower than under the Obama administration, it concluded.

In 2017, just weeks after the new administration took office, the Education and Justice Departments rescinded an Obama-era guidance document that informed schools that denying students access to bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity was a violation under Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in institutions that receive federal funding. The Trump administration believed, as many conservatives had long argued, that the Obama administration’s guidance amounted to overreach and was inconsistent with federal law.

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[1] Url: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/29/us/politics/gay-transgender-rights-devos.html

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