The Virginia State Conference of the NAACP (Virginia NAACP) condemns the Youngkin Administration’s rollback of protections for transgender students. The rollback of protections for transgender students, outlined in the “2022 Model Policies On The Privacy, Dignity And Respect For All Students And Parents In Virginia’s Public Schools”, sends a deeply troubling message to students that this administration will not stand up for students’ civil rights.
Robert N. Barnette, Jr, President of the Virginia NAACP, states:
“Hundreds of thousands of transgender students received a clear message: the law was not on their side. This policy is painful and resembles the history of segregation in restrooms and other public accommodations and history is at risk of repeating itself. That painful and ignoble era is that while private space barriers like racially segregated bathrooms may have once seemed, to some, like minor inconveniences or insignificant sources of embarrassment, they were, instead, a profound indignity that inflicted deep and indelible harms on individuals of both races, and society at large. The Virginia NAACP will fight for civil rights, and we believe all people deserve to be treated with dignity—regardless of race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, ability, gender or sexuality. No one deserves to be discriminated against because of their identity or to be targeted with erasure and suppression because of their lived experiences. And we have seen how hateful speech and laws intended to discriminate against marginalized communities often lead to hateful actions – including violence.”
The Virginia NAACP has historically been at the forefront of driving our society to reject this kind of discrimination. The Virginia NAACP continues to leverage our voices and expertise to advocate for laws and policies that promote the substandard treatment of any group of people.