Apple Inc. issued a statement to Axios on Wednesday night, regarding the Trump Administration’s decison to rescind Obama-era federal guidance to schools on transgender rights.
Apple believes everyone deserves a chance to thrive in an environment free from stigma and discrimination. We support efforts toward greater acceptance, not less, and we strongly believe that transgender students should be treated as equals. We disagree with any effort to limit or rescind their rights and protections. — Apple Inc.
“Obama had instructed public schools last May to let transgender students use the bathrooms matching their chosen gender identity, threatening to withhold funding for schools that did not comply,” Daniel Trotta reports for Reuters. “Trump, a Republican who took office last month, rescinded those guidelines, even though they had been put on hold by a federal judge, arguing that states and public schools should have the authority to make their own decisions without federal interference.”
“‘We all know that Donald Trump is a bully, but his attack on transgender children today is a new low,’ said Rachel Tiven, chief executive of Lambda Legal, which advocates for LGBT people,” Trotta reports. “‘Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who spearheaded the lawsuit challenging the Obama guidance, hailed the Trump administration action. ‘Our fight over the bathroom directive has always been about former President Obama’s attempt to bypass Congress and rewrite the laws to fit his political agenda for radical social change,'” said Paxton, a Republican.”
Read more in the full article here.
“Individual schools will remain free to let transgender students use the bathrooms with which they are most comfortable,” The New York Times reports. “And the effect of the administration’s decision will not be immediate because a federal court had already issued a nationwide injunction barring enforcement of the Obama order.”
NYT reports, “While Wednesday’s order significantly rolls back transgender protections, it does include language stating that schools must protect transgender students from bullying, a provision [Education Secretary Betsy] DeVos asked for, one person with direct knowledge of the process said.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Hey, who’s in the market for some new Mac desktops?
SEE ALSO:
Tim Cook’s Apple: More socially responsible, less visionary – August 24, 2016
Apple’s politics may be hurting its brand – June 29, 2016
Apple objects to North Carolina law company says discriminates against LGBTs – March 28, 2016
Apple backs U.S. bill banning lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender discrimination – July 23, 2015
America is sometimes truly a disturbing place. The infamous ‘bathroom law’ was trying to solve a non-existent problem. And the entire discussion on the issue seems to be revolving around a non-existent problem.
Laws are usually passed when an existing problem requires regulation (for example, seat belts reduce highway deaths).
There were no known criminal cases in the US where a man, dressed and appearing to look like a woman, entered a woman’s bathroom in order to ogle women in their intimate space. The law that was introduced wasn’t protecting anyone. Meanwhile the (un)intended consequence of such a law is that a person who at birth had a penis, but had at some point in time became a woman (with hormone treatment, and for some with surgery), is now forced into a bathroom with men. More disturbingly, someone who was born with a vagina, but at some point entered hormone treatment and now identifies (and dresses) as a man (complete with a beard and mustache) is forced into a woman’s bathroom.
Well, call me whatever you want, but I don’t care what is written on anyone’s birth certificate. I don’t want ANYONE looking (or thinking) like a man walk into a woman’s bathroom while my daughters (or wife) are there.
This law (and this thinking) is a clear message from the conservatives to all those who identify as transgender: “You are an abomination, we don’t want you among us, you must suppress that and be what you were born; otherwise, you should kill yourself”.
I have no doubt that ultimately, the law (and all other similar policies elsewhere) will fail the constitutional test. I can’t imagine how an issue of constitutional rights can be abridged by the states.
Clear and lucid as ever, but constitutional rights are abridged over a very major issue all the time. As I said earlier, how is it one state can choose to execute someone, and another can choose not to do so?
This issue is inequitable under Federal scale. The life of one criminal is diminished in one state over another. Worse…the life of one victim too.
It is quite apparent that the LGBT mob have no thought for the welfare of the majority, who are greatly discomforted by their activities.
Let everyone use whichever bathroom they like. Do away with gender anyway. We all have to pee at some time. It’s a human dignity thing.
Forcing people to conform to use specific facilities, based on what they are is indignant. Otherwise we are no better than having his’ or her’s coffee pots. Equal but not separate.
At home we all use the same facilities. In the public it should be no different.
Calling someone’s identity as mental illness is indignant as well. I mean claiming something you are not, I.E. Superman is one thing, believing it to be so is, suspect and needs attention. However a boy who feel like girl and viseversa is not the same thing. They know their gender but identify and feel something else, I.E. they are not crazy. However you bully them or tell them they are somehow broken, can induce mental illness.
It’s already proven that physical gender form and mental gender form are independent from each other and manifest in the womb by a combination of genetics and environmental conditions affected through hormones and acidity of the amniotic fluids. The result is a gender spectrum.
For the sake of everyone. We need to put this behind us and do away with social gender.
Liberalisem in US is getting dangerously close to dogmotized radical fundamentalism.. (sound familiar…. ? )
If anything, everyone, be scared of that.
Try to unify not divide.
Good for Apple.
Also liked MDN’s take. 🙂