School district considers official policy to ban students from using nonexistent litter boxes

A school district in Missouri is considering an anti-trans bathroom policy that includes a provision aimed at banning litter boxes.

As the Los Angeles Blade reports, the Francis Howell School District in suburban St. Louis held a public hearing last week concerning the policy, which would require students to use either single occupancy gender-neutral restrooms or restrooms that correspond to the sex they were assigned at birth. The policy requires district schools to provide “at a minimum, one single-use restroom for student use.”

Related:

Montana’s top education official says schools are letting kids use cat litterboxes

The only problem: It’s complete BS.

But as journalist Erin Reed notes, single-occupancy restrooms can be inconveniently located, and forcing trans students to use them can lead to students being outed.

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The district’s proposed policy also allows for all students to use the gender-neutral restrooms, potentially creating a situation in which a trans student is forced to use a bathroom that does not correspond to their gender identity because the single-occupancy one is occupied.

In August, the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld its 2017 decision in Whitaker v. Kenosha Unified School District, in which it ruled in part that a Wisconsin school district had not provided a transgender student a sufficient alternative under Title IX by requiring him to use a gender-neutral bathroom that was inconveniently located and subjected him to “stigmatization.”

Francis Howell School District’s proposed policy describes access to single-use restrooms as a “privilege” and allows schools to “discipline” any student who “abuses the use of single-use restroom(s) to consistently arrive late to class.” As Reed notes, with schools only required to provide one single-occupancy restroom for student use, this could result in trans students being forced to use restrooms that do not align with their gender identity to avoid punishment.

The policy also includes the following provision: “Except as necessary due to a physical or kinetic disability, only toilets and urinals shall be used to discharge human waste within restrooms or single-use restrooms.” According to Reed, anti-trans organization Francis Howell Families, which supported five members of the district’s current school board, confirmed that the policy is aimed at banning “cat litter-boxes for staff to clean up.”

In the last few years, anti-trans conservatives have pushed the urban myth that schools have begun recognizing furries — a subculture in which people dress up as anthropomorphic animal characters — as a gender identity and begun installing litter boxes for students who identify as furries to use. Republican politicians and right-wing commentators have repeated the hoax to gin up the moral panic around trans and nonbinary kids and to push efforts to ban students from using school bathrooms that match their gender identity.

The myth has been thoroughly debunked. Last October, NBC News reported that none of the school districts that had been accused by Republican politicians in 2022 of installing litter boxes had actually done so.

During last week’s hearing, Amy Easterling of the non-partisan parent organization Francis Howell Forward said the proposed policy “puts our transgender and gender non-conforming students in the crosshairs of a manufactured culture war.”

“The reality is that what you are creating is a situation where kids who look ‘wrong’ are at even more risk of bullying,” she told the board.

She described the part of the policy aimed at banning litter boxes as “ridiculous.”

“If you believe that this is a true issue, you do not have the intelligence, nor the judgement to be an elected official, and frankly, I’m embarrassed,” she added.

Becky Hormuth, who also spoke at last week’s hearing, raised the possibility of legal action should the board vote to approve the policy. “If this policy passes, my family has no choice but to seek further legal action against the Francis Howell board of education, because inclusivity is not only a moral imperative, it is also a legal one,” she said.

The board is expected to vote on the policy in November.