Summarised by Centrist
The advocacy group Resist Gender Education says the Law Commission’s new Ia Tangata report has “declared open season on girls’ rights.”
The report recommends changes to the Human Rights Act that would prevent schools, sports, and public facilities from excluding people of the opposite sex if they identify differently.
Spokesperson Fern Hickson argued the changes would erode the purpose of single-sex schools and safe female spaces, saying: “Giving males with a ‘gender identity’ legal access to female spaces negates their purpose and deprives the next generation of girls of the freedom to safely use public facilities that their mothers and grandmothers were able to enjoy.”
She called it “absurd” that religious schools could still exclude students on faith grounds but not on sex, and accused the Commission of ignoring safeguarding concerns raised in submissions.
The report itself downplayed the impact, stating it was “not convinced that admitting what is likely to be, at most, a handful of transgender students to a single-sex school would interfere with its general character.”
Hickson countered that the proposals elevate the wishes of a few over the rights of many, creating “a new class of student which has more rights than anyone else.”
