Minnesota Court of Appeals makes landmark ruling

ST. PAUL, Minn. (KEYC) — The Minnesota Court of Appeals has ruled that schools must allow students to use locker rooms that correspond with their gender identity.

This ruling came as a result of a lawsuit against the Anoka-Hennepin School District after a transgender student on the swim team was forced to use a private locker room.

The Minnesota Department of Health stated that the court’s decision is a landmark.

Jeni Kolstad, executive director of the South Central Minnesota Pride organization, shares the impact this decision has on Minnesota.

“I am really pleased to see that the State has decided to say that this was a violation and our state does not stand for this. You know that now we’ve got some definite legal backing to be able to prevent these types of situations from occurring. I think our state has always been kind of front-runners on this because we were the first state to prohibit gender identity discrimination overall, and so I am just really pleased to see that Minnesota is willing to take a stand again and say ‘yeah, no this was not right. This was violating an individual’s rights,’” explained Kolstad.

The court stated that students should not feel like they have to shop around to “obtain a discrimination-free education.”

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