Better locker rooms: It's not just a transgender thing

(THE CONVERSATION) Several cases working their way through the legal system have placed a national spotlight on the issue of transgender access to bathrooms.

While some states have taken steps to allow access based on gender identity, many are considering legislation that restricts bathroom use by the sex assigned at birth.

Most of these court cases also apply to student athlete access to locker rooms and question schools’ obligations to provide appropriate facilities as well as the rights transgender athletes have to access these facilities.

The old policy allowed transgender Olympians to participate only if they had transitioned via sex reassignment surgery, had completed at least two years of hormone therapy and could provide legal documentation of their transition.

Trans women (athletes assigned male sex at birth and who identify as a woman) can compete as long as they have testosterone levels below a certain threshold.

The Department of Education found this exclusion to violate the student’s civil rights and eventually reached an agreement with the school district that now permits the student to access the girls’ locker room.

Arguments around safety are sometimes expressed as a concern that transgender individuals themselves are a threat to cisgender female users of the locker room.

To alleviate the discomfort that all students – transgender and cisgender alike – might experience in such settings, as new schools are built, new locker rooms across the country are being designed with privacy in mind, with individual showers and changing areas available for any student.

Transgender student-athletes should be able to use the locker room, shower, and toilet facilities in accordance with the student’s gender identity.

Given the problems associated with open locker room concepts, the answer for better services, privacy, and trans inclusion all revolve around better locker room spaces.