Yale University filed a suit against Connecticut Friday for requiring several non-gender neutral bathrooms to be placed on its campus, following complaints from angry students.
The New Haven-based university wants all restrooms in its law school to be designated as gender neutral. However, this plan violates state building codes, which do not count gender neutral bathrooms when evaluating whether a building has enough toilets.
“The proposed shift in designation to gender neutral … would facilitate quick access to a bathroom within the building for persons of all gender identities,” the university wrote in its lawsuit.
Yale officials added that changing the state building code would “prevent discrimination on the basis of gender identity.”
If the current state code remains in place, the university will be forced to add more bathrooms to its campus in order to adhere to the rules requiring a certain number of restrooms for men and women.
Yale already has dozens of gender neutral bathrooms in 23 buildings on campus. However, a group of law students are lobbying for more gender neutral bathrooms, arguing that the current locations are inconvenient and have lines that are too long.
“This feels important to me because it’s so basic — we want to use the bathroom in peace, without worrying about being late or running far afield just to pee,” Rachel Luban, a member of the student transgender rights group OutLaws, told the Yale Daily News.
Yale’s lawsuit is the latest battle in an already heated debate over accommodating transgender students versus protecting individual privacy.
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