LUBBOCK, Texas -
A letter from the Department of Justice and Department of Education clarifies the fed's opinion concerning the growing questions about transgender student bathrooms in public schools.
Cadyn Cypert, a transgender male, struggled in school growing up.
"Sometimes I would get glances and looks and some people would make a snarky comment," Cypert said.
Going through Frenship ISD having to use the woman's restroom wasn't easy for him as a transgender male.
"They'd call me like a dyke, lesbo, things like that," Cypert described. "They would say that I was going to burn in hell."
Title IX, a federal law established in the 1970s prohibits discrimination based on sex. The expansion of that definition would have protected Cadyn when he was growing up in Lubbock.
"The terms sex in Title IX include transgender students. So therefore if you discriminate against a transgender student you are in violation of Title IX which prohibits discrimination based on sex," Kyle Velte a visiting assistant professor at Texas Tech University's Law School said.
Violating Title IX could cost the schools federal funding.
"In a trans phobic move that really represents no risk to anyone except to really illustrate your own trans phobia, you are robbing the children of Texas of billions of dollars," Velte said. "And those billion of dollars are not being taken away from transgender students, they're being taken away from poor students, disabled students, English language learners, teachers."
State Senator Charles Perry reminds local school districts to not jump the gun just yet saying it's a matter that will be decided in the courts.
"There's nothing pushing policy at the school board level, at the superintendent level, today. So I just caution don't make policy you might not be able to undo. Once the courts hear it out it could be a one day battle, it could be a ten year battle," Perry explained.
That policy allows transgender students to use the gendered bathroom they identify with not the one that corresponds to the sex listed on their birth certificate.
"Alternatively what the school could do if they want to be in compliance with Title IX is to have a whole hallway of single stalls of gender neutral, single user. That way everyone is treated the same. We're not distinguished on sex," Velte said.
Though Senator Perry sees it differently.
"The inclusion aspect means today 14-year-old daughter goes to a locker facility to shower after some athletic event. A male would need to be able to be included in that setting," Perry said. "You couldn't separate. Separate is not considered equal. So I don't know what the cost looks like at that point but I know what I think as a dad and I know what I think my district believes."
Velte says there are zero reported cases of a transgender person assaulting anyone in a bathroom. She says to enforce the laws already in place.
"When folks are assaulted in bathrooms it's by cisgender, heterosexual men by vast majority of numbers," Velte said. "All the data will play that out. So if the anxiety and fear are around attacks in bathrooms what the legislature should be doing is enforcing the criminal laws that already exist more robustly."
Regardless, Sen. Perry said President Obama has no authority to enforce this.
"It's a state's rights matter, it's a local matter, it's a values issue, it's very deep and personal and it hits to the core of decency for a lot of people," Perry said.
Cadyn has graduated high school, transferring to LISD his senior year. He looks forward to the day he can use the men's bathroom no questions asked.
"You've probably shared the same bathroom with a transgender person in your lifetime," Cypert said. "The only way you're going to know if you're being the creepy one looking at their genitals."
