Trump Abolishes Rules on Bathrooms For Transgender Students

By Victor Ernest

US President Donald Trump has put an end to the 2016 Obama administration law allowing transgender students to use the bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity.

According to New York Times, Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, initially resisted signing off on the order and told President Trump that she was uncomfortable with it.

The new policy overruled the advice of President Trump’s education secretary and placed his administration firmly in the middle of the culture wars that many Republicans have tried to leave behind.

NYT report has it that Attorney General Jeff Sessions pushed the Donald Trump administration to put an end to the Obama-era policy.

According to the same report, the dilemma of  how to address bathroom access, which the Obama White House clarified last year, had opened a rift inside the Trump administration.

Betsy DeVos, the secretary of education, has been against overruling the Obama’s policy which she believes would sprung another controversy in a state that has been experiencing unprecedented protest against the Trump’s government.

The attorney general, Jeff Sessions, who had been expected to move quickly to roll back the civil rights policy put in place under his Democratic predecessors, was insistent that his Justice Department act decisively on the issue because of two pending court cases that could have upheld the protections and pushed the government into further litigation.

Meanwhile, at the time of publishing this report, hundreds of protesters were said to be gathered outside the White House to protest against Trump’s order ending the transgender students protection.