The Trump administration Wednesday revoked federal guidelines issued by former President Barack Obama that allowed public school students to use restrooms and other facilities corresponding to their gender identity.

A document submitted to the Supreme Court by the Solicitor General's office said that the Obama-era directive issued this past May did not "undergo any formal public process" or explain how the directive was "consistent with the express language of Title IX," the federal law outlawing sex discrimination in education and activities.

"This is an issue best solved at the state and local level," Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said. "Schools, communities, and families can find -- and in many cases have found -- solutions that protect all students."

"Congress, state legislatures, and local governments are in a position to adopt appropriate policies or laws addressing this issue," Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement. "The Department of Justice remains committed to the proper interpretation and enforcement of Title IX and to its protections for all students, including LGBTQ students, from discrimination, bullying, and harassment.”



In a letter to the nation's schools, the Justice and Education departments said the earlier guidance "has given rise to significant litigation regarding school restrooms and locker rooms."



The agencies withdrew the guidance to "in order to further and more completely consider the legal issues involved."

Anti-bullying safeguards would not be affected by the change, according to the letter. "All schools must ensure that all students, including LGBT students, are able to learn and thrive in a safe environment," it said.



It was not clear what immediate impact the change would have on schools, as a federal judge in Texas put a temporary hold on the Obama guidance soon after it was issued -- after 13 states sued.

Even without that hold, the guidance carried no force of law. But transgender rights advocates say it was useful and necessary to protect students from discrimination. Opponents argued it was federal overreach and violated the safety and privacy of other students.



White House spokesman Sean Spicer said President Donald Trump "has made it clear throughout the campaign that he is a firm believer in states' rights and that certain issues like this are not best dealt with at the federal level."



Conservative activists hailed the change, saying the Obama directives were illegal and violated the rights of fixed-gender students, especially girls who did not feel safe changing clothes or using restrooms next to anatomical males.



"Our daughters should never be forced to share private, intimate spaces with male classmates, even if those young men are struggling with these issues," said Vicki Wilson, a member of Students and Parents for Privacy. "It violates their right to privacy and harms their dignity."



However, the reversal is a setback for transgender rights groups, which had been urging Trump to keep the guidelines in place. Advocates say federal law will still prohibit discrimination against students based on their gender or sexual orientation.



Still, they say lifting the Obama directive puts children in harm's way.



"Reversing this guidance tells trans kids that it's OK with the Trump administration and the Department of Education for them to be abused and harassed at school for being trans," said American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten.



Activists protested the move Wednesday outside the White House. "Respect existence or expect resistance," read one placard.



Spicer denied media reports that DeVos, who has been criticized for her stance on LGBT issues, had opposed the change but was overruled by Sessions. Spicer said any disagreement was merely over wording and timing.



"There is no daylight between anybody," Spicer said, adding that DeVos was "100 percent" on board with the decision.



The Obama administration's guidance was based on its determination that Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in education, also applies to gender identity.



While not legally binding, the guidance sent a warning that schools could lose funding if they did not comply.



Republicans pushed back, arguing that the federal effort was an example of Obama administration meddling in state and local matters. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick equated it to blackmail and said his state was ready to forfeit federal education money rather than comply.



Legal experts said the change in position could impact pending court cases involving the federal sex discrimination law, including a case to be heard by the Supreme Court in March involving Gavin Grimm, a transgender teen who was denied bathroom access in Virginia.



The justices could decide not to hear the case and direct lower courts to decide that issue.



In a phone interview with the Associated Press, Grimm said of the Trump action: "It's not positive. It has the possibility of hurting transgender students and transgender people. We're going to keep fighting like we have been and keep fighting for the right thing."



A patchwork of state laws could continue to emerge as a result of the change. Fifteen states have explicit protections for transgender students in their state laws, and many individual school districts in other states have adopted policies that cover such students on the basis of their gender identity, said Sarah Warbelow, legal director of the Human Rights Campaign. Just one state, North Carolina, has enacted a law restricting access to bathrooms in government-owned buildings to the sex that appears on a person's birth certificate. Lawmakers in more than 10 states are considering similar legislation, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.



Fox News' Shannon Bream and the Associated Press contributed to this report. </s> Over the course of the Obama administration, several government policies or legal interpretations were put into place that resulted in explicit civil rights protections for transgender individuals. For example, on 13 May 2016 the Department of Education’s Civil Rights office released a “Dear Colleague Letter on Transgender Students” stipulating that Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (which prohibits sex discrimination at institutions of higher education that receive federal financial aid) also applied to discrimination based on gender identity:

Along with similar rules articulated by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) with respect to Obamacare, such recognition represented the final stage in the evolution of how the federal government recognized transgender civil rights during the Obama administration. In a broad sense, the Obama-era stance was that Title IX (and also Title VII of the Civil Rights Act) applied to gender identity, not necessarily only biologically-defined sex. But the Trump administration rescinded the Dear Colleague letter in February 2017.

In May 2016, prior to Donald Trump’s presidency, Roger Severino — then the “director of the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation” — argued in a Daily Signal piece that the Obama-era changes represented a “radical gender ideology.” Now, as part of Trump’s administration, Severino is head of the Health and Human Services Civil Rights Office overseeing how the Federal government interprets those same policies.

In a 21 October 2018 article, the New York Times described HHS as “spearheading an effort to establish a legal definition of sex under Title IX.” According to a memo described (but not published) by the Times, the HSS (in coordination with other departments) effectively planned to reverse Obama-era moves by explicitly defining gender as binary and determined at birth:

This memo, the Times reported, came in advance of two proposed rules, one from HHS and one from the Department of Education, that the federal government planned on releasing for public comment in the fall of 2018.

The memo’s contents were met with immediate condemnation by many LGBTQ and human rights groups, who feared that the aim of a strict definition of gender was to define transgender individuals out of existence. Widespread protests followed the Times reporting, and the hashtag “#WontBeErased” began trending on Twitter as demonstrations took place around the U.S.

Such a rule could limit the ability of transgender individuals to claim discrimination based on gender identity, and could exclude them from civil rights protections they had been afforded under President Obama:

This takes a position that what the medical community understands about their patients — what people understand about themselves — is irrelevant because the government disagrees,” said Catherine E. Lhamon, who led the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights in the Obama administration and helped write transgender guidance that is being undone. The move would be the most significant of a series of maneuvers, large and small, to exclude the population from civil rights protections and roll back the Obama administration’s more fluid recognition of gender identity. The Trump administration has sought to bar transgender people from serving in the military and has legally challenged civil rights protections for the group embedded in the nation’s health care law.

Recent estimates suggest that between 1 million and 1.4 million people identify as transgender in the United States, and several critics have noted the scientific untenability of the ideas floated in the memo with regard to genetic testing to determine gender. Such testing does not always produce accurate results and cannot account for certain cases of intersex individuals whose chromosomally-determined gender does not match their physical manifestations of gender. A commentary piece in the Journal of the American Medical Association articulated these issues in the context of testing athletes for gender in 2000:

In other words, the science that the federal government has floated as a way to enforce binary gender determinations is not actually rooted in a good faith understanding of that science, and it still cannot account for the biological reality that gender is at times ambiguous even when using the scientific tests they advocate for.

In terms of its potential effect on the civil rights claims of trans individuals, the HHS memo was similar to a 4 October 2017 Department of Justice memo from Attorney General Jeff Sessions titled “Revised Treatment of Transgender Employment Discrimination Claims Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” In that latter memo, Sessions made explicit that his Department of Justice did not consider gender identity to be protected as a basis for employment discrimination under the 1964 Civil Rights act:

Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder had released a Justice Department memo in 2014 directing all offices “that the protection of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 extends to claims of discrimination based on an individual’s gender identity, including transgender status.” Title VII of the Civil Rights act prohibits employment discrimination based on “race, color, religion, sex, or national origin,” “age”, and disability status. Sessions’ memo reversed the Obama-era interpretation of “sex”.

Human Rights Watch has called on Congress to pass legislation that makes explicit the civil rights of trans people assumed under the Obama administration:

The new rules from HHS and the Department of Education, yet to be released officially, will likely be challenged in court if they are implemented. </s> Feb. 22, the Department of Justice and the Department of Education issued a notice withdrawing the statements of policy and guidance issued last year by the Obama administration that affected public schools.

 

 In May 2016, the Obama administration sent a letter to all public schools in America notifying teachers and administrators of a new regulation for treating “gender identity.” The letter stated that, to comply with federal law, policies concerning students would be based on their “gender identity” and not on their biological sex.

 

 The Trump administration disagreed that “sex” and “gender identity” should be interpreted as synonymous and believed that the issue should be handled by states and local school districts.

 

 Although the regulation has been rescinded, it’s important to understand how radically the directive would have changed public education in America. Here are some points you should know about the issue:



By what authority did the Obama administration issue the directive?

Although Congress is responsible for creating laws, they have ceded much of their authority to define what laws mean to the other two branches of government.

 

 We often think the judiciary is the branch of government responsible for interpreting the law, but in reality the executive branch, whose departments act as regulatory agencies, generally determines how a statutes will be interpreted. Regulatory agencies handle administrative law, primarily by codifying and enforcing rules and regulations. When Congress passes a new law it usually goes to a regulatory agency to determine how the law will be put in place.

 

 This specific letter was a “significant guidance” document, a policy instrument that provides “initial interpretations of statutory and regulatory requirements and changes in interpretation or policy.” These type of directives are often used to “Raise novel legal or policy issues arising out of legal mandates, the President’s priorities, or the principles …”



Why was the policy changed implemented by both the Education Department and the Justice Department?

The policy change had to be accepted by both departments since the letter issued by the Obama administration provided guidance on how both the U.S. Department of Education (ED) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) would “evaluate a school’s compliance” with interpretation of laws regarding transgender students.



What law was changed or interpreted by the Obama administration letter?

The letter provided guidance on the Obama administration’s interpretation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, a law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs receiving Federal financial assistance. The administration had reinterpreted Title IX to make “gender identity” synonymous with “sex.”

 

 The key sentence in the letter stated, “The Departments [ED and DOJ] treat a student’s gender identity as the student’s sex for purposes of Title IX and its implementing regulations.” In other words, if a biologically male or biologically female student “identified” as the opposite sex, then for almost all purposes public schools and colleges were required to treat them as such.



What were the penalties for refusing to follow this directive?

Because of pending lawsuits, the Obama administration was unable to fully implement the change. But school districts who did not comply would have been considered to be in violation of Title IX, and could have lost Federal funds for their school(s).



What exactly does “transgender” mean?

The letter states that, “Transgender describes those individuals whose gender identity is different from the sex they were assigned at birth.”

 

 More broadly, transgenderism is an umbrella term for the state or condition of identifying or expressing a gender identity that does not match a person’s physical/genetic sex. A person can be transgender and “identify” as male, female, “third sex,” “genderfluid” (flexible about their gender identity and fluctuating between genders), “genderqueer” (not exclusively masculine or feminine‍), or dozens of variations.

 

 Transgender is independent of sexual orientation, and those who self-identify as transgender may consider themselves to be heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, pansexual, polysexual or asexual.



As the letter defined the term, “Gender identity refers to an individual’s internal sense of gender. A person’s gender identity may be different from or the same as the person’s sex assigned at birth.”

 

 The LGBTQ community and their allies consider gender to be a trait that exists along a continuum and is not inherently rooted in biology or physical expressions.



How would a student prove they are transgender?

They didn’t have to prove anything; all that was required was for the student or student’s parent to notify the school of the child’s chosen gender identity. As the letter states, “Under Title IX, there is no medical diagnosis or treatment requirement that students must meet as a prerequisite to being treated consistent with their gender identity.”

 

 But couldn’t a “genderqueer” or “genderfluid” student claim to be both male and female at the same time?

 

 Yes. If a child claimed to be both male and female they would have been allowed to use either male or female facilities or switch back and for the whenever they choose.



What if students or parents objected to sharing a locker room with someone of the opposite biological sex?

The letter makes it clear such concerns did not matter, and that schools would be required to provide “equal access to educational programs and activities even in circumstances in which other students, parents or community members raise objections or concerns.” Under the Obama administration, choosing one’s gender identity was considered a protected civil right. As the letter noted, that means, “As is consistently recognized in civil rights cases, the desire to accommodate others’ discomfort cannot justify a policy that singles out and disadvantages a particular class of students.”



Would schools have been required to call male students “she” and female students “he”?

Yes. School staff and contractors would have been required to use pronouns and names consistent with a transgender student’s chosen gender identity.



How did the Obama administration directive affect restrooms and locker rooms?

Schools would have been forced to allow students to use the facilities that align with their gender identity. They would not be able to require children to use facilities based on their biological sex or use individual-user facilities when other students are not required to do so.



How did the Obama administration directive affect athletics?

The regulation was surprisingly vague on this point. In general, if a biologically male transgender student wanted to play the girl’s team they must be allowed to do so. However, the letter also claims, “Title IX does not prohibit age-appropriate, tailored requirements based on sound, current and research-based medical knowledge about the impact of the students’ participation on the competitive fairness or physical safety of the sport.”



How would the Obama administration directive have affected single-sex classes?

When offering single-sex classes and activities, a school would have been required to allow transgender students to participate consistent with their gender identity.



How would the Obama administration directive affect single-sex schools?

Title IX does not apply to the admissions policies of certain educational institutions, including non-vocational elementary and secondary schools, and private undergraduate colleges. Those schools are therefore permitted under Title IX to set their own sex-based admissions policies.



How would the Obama administration directive affect fraternities and sororities?

Title IX does not apply to the membership practices of social fraternities and sororities. Those organizations are therefore permitted under Title IX to set their own policies regarding the sex, including gender identity, of their members.



How would the Obama administration directive have affected housing and overnight accommodations?

Schools must allow students to stay in accommodations that align with their gender identity. For example, if on an overnight field trip, a biologically male transgender student could sleep in the same room with female students.



What if a biological male wanted to wear a dress to prom?

According to the letter, a school “may not discipline students or exclude them from participating in activities for appearing or behaving in a manner that is consistent with their gender identity or that does not conform to stereotypical notions of masculinity or femininity (e.g., in yearbook photographs, at school dances or at graduation ceremonies).”



Does the change allow schools to discriminate against transgender students?

No. According to the new directive, the withdrawal of the Obama administration letter “does not leave students without protections from discrimination, bullying, or harassment. All schools must ensure that all students, including LGBT students, are able to learn and thrive in a safe environment. The Department of Education Office for Civil Rights will continue its duty under law to hear all claims of discrimination and will explore every appropriate opportunity to protect all students and to encourage civility in our classrooms. The Department of Education and the Department of Justice are committed to the application of Title IX and other federal laws to ensure such protection.”

 

 (EDITOR’S NOTE – Joe Carter serves as a communications specialist for the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. This article first appeared at erlc.com. Used by permission.) </s> Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said the Trump administration will revamp the guidance through a rule-making process that likely will take months. | Jacquelyn Martin/AP DeVos to scrap Obama-era school sexual assault policy

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said Thursday that she will rescind an Obama-era schools directive on sexual assault and develop a replacement that she said would do a better job of balancing the rights of victims and the accused.

"The truth is that the system established by the prior administration has failed too many students," DeVos said during a half-hour speech at George Mason University where she took no questions. "Survivors, victims of a lack of due process and campus administrators have all told me that the current approach does a disservice to everyone involved."

Story Continued Below

But the announcement drew strong objections from womens' groups, victims advocates and leading Democrats, including former Vice President Joe Biden, who said the changes were a step in the wrong direction.

"Any change that weakens Title IX protections will be devastating," wrote Biden, who drove the Obama administration's efforts to crack down on campus sexual assault, in a statement posted on his Facebook page.

"I'm asking everyone who has a stake in this fight to step up," Biden said. "Students, parents, faculty, alumni. Don't just sit and watch. Speak up. Any rollback of Title IX protections will hurt your classmates, your students, your friends, your sisters."

The 2011 Obama guidance for the first time pushed school district, college and university leaders to combat sexual harassment, including sexual violence, saying the institutions were required to do so under Title IX, a federal law that prohibits sex discrimination. Women's groups hailed that as a crucial step in cracking down on sexual violence on campuses. But critics said it trampled the rights of the accused.

The Trump administration will revamp the guidance through a rulemaking process that likely will take months, DeVos said, blasting the guidance for having "weaponized the Office of Civil Rights to work against schools and against students." She said the administration will give all sides a chance to offer opinions on how it should move forward.

"We will seek public feedback and combine institutional knowledge, professional expertise and the experiences of students to replace the current approach with a workable, effective and fair system," DeVos said. "This is not about letting institutions off the hook. They still have important work to do."

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DeVos said after the speech that she intends to revoke the Obama guidance."The process is an extended one," she told CBS News. "But it is the intention to revoke or rescind the previous guidance around this."

The Education Department will issue temporary Title IX guidelines for school districts, colleges and universities as it works on a permanent replacement for Obama-era guidelines, said agency spokeswoman Liz Hill.

The far-reaching 2011 Obama-era guidance, issued in the form of a Dear Colleague Letter, was controversial from the start. It threatened a loss of funding to schools that failed to do enough to make students safe from sexual harassment, assault and rape. Critics said it pushed colleges to trample the rights of the accused. Among other things, the guidance pushed a lower standard of proof in campus disciplinary hearings than is used in criminal trials.

Many of those critics hailed DeVos' announcement as "a really positive development."

“I think it was a strong signal from the department that the current approach is unworkable and needs to be changed,” said Joe Cohn, legislative and policy director at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a civil rights group that brought a court challenge to the 2011 guidance.

Chris Perry, deputy executive director of the group, Stop Abusive and Violent Environments, which represents people accused of sexual assault, said DeVos' remarks show “the secretary is listening to folks."

The decision to launch a notice-and-comment process was long expected. DeVos said in July — after a series of meetings with sexual assault survivors, students accused of assault and college officials — that she would overhaul the policy. She told reporters at the time that “it’s clear that there are failings in this process. A system without due process protections ultimately serves no one in the end.”

Advocacy groups — including those representing both sexual assault survivors and students accused of assault — were not invited to attend Thursday's announcement in person, despite meeting with DeVos on the subject in July.

Instead, DeVos delivered the announcement during a tightly controlled half-hour event at the university's Arlington, Va., campus, sponsored by the university law school chapter of the Federalist Society, a conservative group. Shouts from protesters outside could be heard as she spoke.

Advocates for survivors of sexual assault said they felt they were given short shrift and noted that research has shown false claims of rape are rare. They said DeVos had indicated she would hold similar listening sessions in other parts of the country before making a decision.

Giving them just one meeting with the secretary "feels a little bit like paying lip service to the importance of having survivors in the room," said Jess Davidson, managing director of End Rape on Campus.

"I think there’s been a really concerning false equivalence of the concerns of survivors and the accused throughout this entire process with the Department of Education," Davidson said.

Sexual assault survivors rallied outside the university ahead of the announcement, urging DeVos to keep what they see as crucial protections in place.

"It's really telling us that we don't matter, that our pain is not relevant to people in power," said Chessy Prout, 18, who said she was assaulted as a high school freshman and subsequently had to change schools.

Advocates slammed the speech afterward. “Don’t be duped by today’s announcement," said Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women's Law Center. "What seems procedural is a blunt attack on survivors of sexual assault. It will discourage schools from taking steps to comply with the law — just at the moment when they are finally working to get it right. And it sends a frightening message to all students: Your government does not have your back if your rights are violated. This misguided approach signals a green light to sweep sexual assault further under the rug.”

Complicating the issue for DeVos are comments made by her civil rights chief, Candice Jackson, who told The New York Times this summer that 90 percent of sexual assault claims stem from drunken and regretted sex. Another complication is President Donald Trump's boast about groping women in the infamous "Access Hollywood" tape.

“Secretary DeVos decided today to continue a pattern of undermining survivors’ rights, once again showing a clear lack of understanding or empathy for the millions of students who have experienced sexual violence on campus," Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat and ranking member of the Senate education committee, said in a statement.

But her announcement drew praise from at least one Republican lawmaker.

"The Department of Education is taking a positive first step in soliciting comments from stakeholders to get a better understanding of ways to better address the problem,” Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford said. "However, this is an issue where Congress must give the Department of Education clear statutory authority to properly regulate."

Despite the administration's plan to rewrite rules on Title IX, it's unlikely that schools will immediately change policies that they spent the last six years writing — and sometimes rewriting — to remain in compliance with federal law.

"No school is going to go back to doing what they were doing before the 2011 guidance," said Terry Hartle, senior vice president at the American Council on Education.

Mel Leonor contributed to this story. </s> The Trump administration Wednesday revoked federal guidelines issued by former President Barack Obama that allowed public school students to use restrooms and other facilities corresponding to their gender identity. </s> Trump Rolls Back Federal Legal Protection For Gender Confused To Violate Privacy Of Little Girls

There had been rumblings that this was going to occur, and it has sent many in the media into a higher level of apoplexy

The Trump administration on Wednesday revoked federal guidelines specifying that transgender students have the right to use public school restrooms that match their gender identity, taking a stand on a contentious issue that has become the central battle over LGBT rights. Officials with the federal Education and Justice departments notified the U.S. Supreme Court late Wednesday that the administration is ordering the nation’s schools to disregard memos the Obama administration issued during the past two years regarding transgender student rights. Those memos said that prohibiting transgender students from using facilities that align with their gender identity violates federal anti-discrimination laws. The two-page “Dear colleague” letter from the Trump administration, which is set to go to the nation’s public schools, does not offer any new guidance, instead saying that the earlier directive needed to be withdrawn because it lacked extensive legal analysis, did not go through a public vetting process, sowed confusion and drew legal challenges. The departments wrote that the Trump administration wants to “further and more completely consider the legal issues involved,” and said that there must be “due regard for the primary role of the States and local school districts in establishing educational policy.” Although it offered no clarity or direction to schools that have transgender students, the letter added that “schools must ensure that all students, including LGBT students, are able to learn and thrive in a safe environment.”

In other words, the issue has been returned to the states and cities, which can determine how they themselves will consider the idea of allowing biological males who are confused about their actual sex into bathrooms, showers, and locker rooms with biological girls, violating the latter’s privacy, at the least. It will be up to the states and municipalities as to whether they will let the gender confused, many of whom are gender confused because their parents are wackos and should have gotten visits from Child Protection Services, compete in sports and other areas that were for the opposite biological sex.

Of course, Liberals are having conniption fits. But, wait, I thought they were super enthused by the notion of states’ rights in the Era Of Trump? No?

The federal government has no place in forcing people to accept the opposite biological sex in their bathrooms, showers, and locker rooms, especially at schools full of underage kids.

That said, the order does not change one thing

The Obama era guidance was already blocked, at least for the time being, as 13 states sued Obama and a judge slapped a hold on the order.

Of course, that’s a male perspective, one which most of us would have shared when we were in school. And, from most examples, and lawsuits, women girls in school are not particularly please with having to share their real safe spaces with biological males.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach. </s> The United States Supreme Court has approved the enforcement of President Trump's plan to ban certain transgender people from the military. The high court voted five votes to four in order to grant the Trump administration's request to lift injunctions blocking the Obama era policy, while challenges continue in lower courts. The policy prohibits 'transgender persons who require or have undergone gender transition' from serving. </s> Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Transgender rights activists protested near the White House against President Trump's decision

Donald Trump's government has revoked guidance to US public schools that allowed transgender students to use toilets matching their gender identity.

The guidance, issued by his predecessor Barack Obama, had been hailed by as a victory for transgender rights.

But critics said it threatened other students' privacy and safety, and should be decided at state level.

Mr Obama's directive had sparked a backlash across the country, with legal challenges from 13 states.

The latest change will have no immediate impact, because Mr Obama's directive has already been temporarily blocked by a judge in Texas since August.

On Wednesday, the Trump administration sent a letter to US schools outlining the change, saying the previous measure had caused confusion.

It had also sparked lawsuits and debate over how it should work in practice, the letter from the Justice and Education departments said.

Last May, Mr Obama's justice and education departments instructed public schools to allow transgender students to use whichever bathroom corresponded to their gender identity.

Though not legally binding, Mr Obama's order warned schools they could lose funding if they did not follow the new guidance.

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Why the N Carolina bill is so controversial

The Obama administration's guidance was based on its interpretation of Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education.

Mr Obama argued that protection extended to gender identity.

Image copyright AFP Image caption Some US schools have already introduced gender neutral bathrooms or allowed students to choose

During his presidential campaign, Mr Trump said transgender students should be allowed to use whichever bathroom "they feel is appropriate".

But he reversed his stance after facing Republican criticism.

On Wednesday, conservative activists praised Mr Trump's order, saying it protected student rights to privacy.

"Our daughters should never be forced to share private, intimate spaces with male classmates, even if those young men are struggling with these issues," said Vicki Wilson, a member of Students and Parents for Privacy.

"It violates their right to privacy and harms their dignity."

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption "My heart is a girl heart" - Zoey's story

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, also praised the move.

"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," he said.

However, transgender activists have argued that gender identity is a civil rights issue that should be enforced at a federal level, not left to individual states.

Image copyright Twitter Image caption Writer Janet Mock

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten called the move a major setback for trans rights.

"By rescinding these protections, the Trump administration is compromising the safety and security of some of our most vulnerable children," she said.

"Reversing this guidance tells trans kids that it's OK with the Trump administration and the Department of Education for them to be abused and harassed at school for being trans."

Some celebrities also criticised the decision on social media, with TV presenter Ellen DeGeneres tweeting: "This isn't about politics. It's about human rights."

Image copyright Twitter Image caption Singer Jackie Evancho, whose sister is transgender, had performed the national anthem at Mr Trump's inauguration

Image copyright Twitter Image caption Singer Katy Perry </s> The Trump administration was working to possibly undo an Obama-era directive which allows students to use school restrooms that match their gender identity, the White House said Tuesday.
The Trump administration revokes Obama-era orders on protection of gender identity under Title IX.