14 DAY TRIAL // The Colorado Civil Rights Division has received a complaint from the parents of 6-year-old Coy Mathis about their transgender son, who wishes to become a girl, being denied access to the girls' restroom.
After the student was barred from the restroom at an elementary institution in Fountain, Colorado, they pulled him out of school. The incident occurred in December 2011, Mercury News reports.
Fountain-Fort Carson School District 8 administrators decided to stop him from using the restroom out of concern for the other female students using the same bathroom.
The school's attorney, Wm. Kelly Dude, mentions that they are taking into account “not only Coy, but other students in the building, their parents and the future impact” that being exposed to male body parts will have on the girls at the school.
“Coy attends class as all other students, is permitted to wear girls' clothes and is referred to as the parents have requested. [...] We want Coy to have the same educational opportunities as every other Colorado student.
“Her school should not be singling her out for mistreatment just because she is transgender,” Mathis responds.
Coy's mother Kathryn Mathis tells ABC News that, from an early age, her son would get “depressed and anxious” for being treated as a boy.
“We started noticing, when Coy was about 18 months, as soon as she could express herself, that she was really expressing that she was a girl,” she says.
She argues that the school's decision will harm her child and set him apart from other students, eventually turning him into a victim of bullying.
“It sets her up for future harassing and bullying, and creates an unsafe environment. The school has a wonderful opportunity to teach students that differences are OK, and we should embrace their differences, instead of teaching them to discriminate against someone who is a little different,” she adds.