Yale has filed a lawsuit against the state of Connecticut over a state building code which mandates “a certain number of bathrooms in every building be assigned by gender.”
Unfortunately for the university, this includes single-user restrooms. Yale wants to designate its Law School restrooms as “gender neutral” as it has in some of its other buildings.
According to a report in the New Haven Register, code forbids existing buildings from “reducing the number of gender designated bathrooms below the number required for new construction.”
The Yale suit contends the school “cannot build additional bathrooms because of ‘programming and space constraints,'” and comments on the “negative impact” more restrooms would have on old edifices like the Sterling Law Building, built in the 1920s.
The suit is an appeal of a Connecticut Codes and Standards Committee ruling which had agreed with the original decision of the Office of the State Building Inspector. This past spring, the latter also had denied a Yale request for an exemption to state building code.
[The lawsuit] said the proposed code modification it sought and the use of gender neutral single-use bathrooms would be in accord within a year with the 2018 International Plumbing Code, which will require that they be labeled “for use by either sex.”
The Codes and Standards Committee Appeal Panel, in its findings of facts, said Yale argued that removing sex-specific signage from one set of its multi-user facilities would boost the number of bathrooms open to either sex.
That multi-user facility is now designated for males and Yale planned to eliminate the urinals, so all the stalls would be enclosed.
The committee found that Yale failed to argue that this was evidence of alternative compliance and said its denial was based on the information provided at the hearing.
It also determined that eliminating the urinals may cause accessibility considerations and found that Yale had failed to establish it had a hardship.
The university said the code modification it was seeking had already been adopted by New York CIty, as well as Washington, D.C., Austin, Texas and San Francisco.
It further argues in its suit, that its request is in accord with Connecticut Public Act 2011-55 which amended certain statutes “to prevent discrimination on the basis of gender identity.”
Gender identity and the use of bathrooms has been a major issue in some states where persons are required to use the bathroom that matches the gender on their birth certificates. This is not the case in Connecticut.
Yale added “it wanted to ameliorate any discomfort some students feel using a gender specific bathroom.”
“A shift in labeling ‘would facilitate quick access to a bathroom within the building for persons of all gender identities, eliminate discomfort by trans and gender non-conforming law students in using gender specific rest rooms and promote the equal treatment of trans and gender non-conforming students.’”
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