Schools across the country strive to create and sustain inclusive, supportive, safe, and nondiscriminatory communities for all students. In recent years, we have received an increasing number of questions from parents, teachers, principals, and school superintendents about civil rights protections for transgender students. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX) and its implementing regulations prohibit sex discrimination in educational programs and activities operated by recipients of Federal financial assistance.1 This prohibition encompasses discrimination based on a student’s gender identity, including discrimination based on a student’s transgender status. This letter summarizes a school’s Title IX obligations regarding transgender students and explains how the U.S. Department of Education (ED) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) evaluate a school’s compliance with these obligations.

ABSTRACT. In the seventh version of their Standards of Care, WPATH recognizes that, as each
person is unique, so is the person’s gender identity. The goal of speech-language therapists/
pathologists is to help transgender people develop voice and communication that reflects their unique
sense of gender. When outer expression is congruent with an inner sense of self, transgender people
may find increased comfort, confidence, and improved function in everyday life. Transgender voice
and communication is a relatively new area of practice within speech-language pathology/therapy
and this document is intended to support clinicians and researchers working in this field. It begins
with a review of the evidence-based literature in transgender voice and communication. The paper
then discusses these clinical topics: trans-specific voice-and-communication assessment, voice
feminization protocols and voice feminizing surgeries. There is also a section on speech and voice
masculinization—an area that has received little previous attention. As minimal standards have yet to
be established in this field the paper concludes with recommendations for good clinical care.

The Board of Directors of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health urges Alberta Health to reconsider and avoid delisting Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS) as a covered health benefit.

WPATH already opposes surgery or sterilization as requirements to change legal gender, per WPATH’s Identity Recognition Statement, 2010. However, some governments erect many other legal barriers preventing trans people having congruent identity documents. Some of these barriers involve health professionals directly, e.g., examining people and filling out paperwork for court proceedings. These legal barriers are harmful to trans people’s health because they make social transition more difficult, put congruent identity documents out of the reach of many, and even contribute to trans people’s vulnerability to discrimination and violence. These laws are at odds with WPATH’s perspectives expressed in SOC 7 and in our letters advising governments at those governments’ request.

No person should have to undergo surgery or accept sterilization as a condition of identity recognition. If a sex marker is required on an identity document, that marker could recognize the person’s lived gender, regardless of reproductive capacity. The WPATH Board of Directors urges governments and other authoritative bodies to move to eliminate requirements for identity recognition that require surgical procedures.