Transgender / Transsexual Bathroom - Restroom References
Employers facing the restroom issue for the first time are legally inclined to apply the "Principle of Least Astonishment", which is that a person who presents as a woman will be less astonishing using the women's restroom than the men's, vice versa for a person presenting as a man. If a concern arrises, from the corporate Legal department or another employee the employer must provide alternative soultions for the employee complaining NOT the transgender individual.
This situation has now been resolved by the federal courts. In landmark case Cruzan vs Davis, a ruling was made in June 2002 by a federal appeals court in Minnesota that an employer is within its rights to instruct a transgendered employee to use the restroom matching their new presentation, and that if another employee complains, the company may offer the complaining employee an accomodation (such a the use of a different restroom by the complaining employee.) .
Please note that you can not request a transgender individual to use the mens bathroom until surgery: because you can not legally require them to reveal there physical anatomy. In additional when dealing with an intersex individual they may already be female, although having a male anatomy.
Lucent Technologies reccomends the following:.
At this time, Lucent recommends that transgendered employees use the restroom for the gender they are presenting
You can read about this in this .pdf at http://www.tgender.net/taw/Fall_00_Emp.pdf on page 18 (or page 7 in acrobat)
Other examples that may be useful to you:
as stated in the Society for Human Resource Management .
"The simplest answers are the easiest. We don't have a lot of complicated rules and expectations. Simplicity is good: we don't discriminate, we cover medically necessary procedures, use the bathroom that matches how you present . . . . It just works."
The HRC ( National Human Rights Campaign) suggests the following:
Employers should grant restroom access according to an employee’s full-time gender presentation. Several major firms, including IBM, Lucent Technologies Inc., Apple Computer and American Airlines, have successfully addressed this issue in their own workplaces.
In the United States, employers are required to provide workers reasonable access to restroom facilities. The U.S. Department of Labor Occupational Safety and Health Administration requires that employers “make toilet facilities available so that employees can use them when they need to do so, and the employer may not impose unreasonable restrictions on employee use of the facilities.
How some employers have addressed restroom access issues in their workplaces:
Employees may use any restroom that corresponds with their full-time gender presentation. Management requires only that, after notifying HR of a decision to transition, a transitioning employee present according to his or her gender identity consistently thereafter.
A transitioning employee may agree to use a unisex restroom, if one is available and reasonably accessible, for some period during the process of transition.
Other cites of interest:
New York City: Anti-Gender Discrimination Law:
What about transgender people who have not had surgery? What facilities will they use? The new law requires that people be allowed to use facilities that accord with their gender identity, not with any particular body part. Just as non-transgender men and women are not asked to prove what body parts they have before entering gender-segregated facilities, transgender people also should not be. All people, regardless of surgical status, are entitled to use facilities which comport with their gender identities regardless of whether their bodies match traditional expectations. Challenging someone’s gender identity and/ or asking invasive personal questions about their body parts is a form of harassment.
ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union)
Certainly a transgender employee should have access to bathroom facilities that accommodate his/her gender expression/identity- be that a unisex bathroom or the gender identified bathroom facility." -- Jay Kaplan, ACLU lawyer.
Harvard
May 13 - Harvard's student council overwhelmingly approved a measure to... ...allow "gender variant" students to use whichever multiple-occupancy restroom they deem appropriate. The proposal passed by a vote of 32-3...
San Francisco Human Rights Commisions (Compliance Guidlines) Section 5 Subsection A
A. BATHROOMS/RESTROOMS: Individuals have the right to use the bathroom/restroom that is consistent with and appropriate to their gender identity. The Commission wants to ensure that people of all genders have safe bathroom access
Reading University (Transgender Policy)
Transgendered students have the right to toilet and washing facilities that are appropriate to their gender.
8. It is entirely inappropriate for transsexual women to use male toilets. It is embarrassing, demeaning and psychologically damaging. Transsexual women are women and for them to use male toilets is discriminatory. The same applies in the reverse situation.
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